Understanding the Church Covenant (Part 4)

*We are in the middle of a series of articles on our church covenant. If you haven't yet read the other articles in the series, you can check them out in the links posted below this article.

Our covenant continues  with the following:

Section 5: “We will endeavor to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and by a pure and loving example to seek the salvation of our family and friends.”

Christian parents that are a part of our local church are to be committed to bring up their children as Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6 (where this language comes from) call us to. Christians are not called to bring up neutral children who “decide on their own” how to live. Our call to make disciples and teach them how to obey everything Jesus taught (Matthew 28:20) surely does not leave our own kids exempt.

 I have met a handful of Christians who think their job is to be neutral when it comes to teaching their kids about religion. I remain deeply skeptical of someone’s own understanding of the gospel here as I wonder why anyone who has (really) been converted would not work toward the conversion of their own children. There is also an incredible naïveté in thinking it is even possible to be world-view neutral - a naiveté that many public educators, script writers for children’s television, social media personalities and other adults that children interact with will not often share. To fail to catechize your own children is to certainly allow someone else to catechize them.

All of us have unsaved loved ones—be they family or friends.  We commit to make Christ known to them—praying for them, praying for each other’s witness, and encouraging each other in the great task of evangelism. One of the regular things our prayer ministry meets to pray for is these very people. Sharing the gospel is not the job of a select few gifted people within the church. No, evangelism is the responsibility of every Christian, and to join a church indicates a desire for others to know Jesus.

But it matters how we go about evangelism, which is why our covenant reads we do this with a “pure and loving example” as 1 Peter 4:14-16 calls us. Make sure your life backs up the message that Jesus offers new life.

Section 6: “We will rejoice at each other’s happiness and endeavor with tenderness and sympathy to bear each other’s burdens and sorrows.”

I hear Matt Smethurst put it this way: “The church is where ‘that’s not your business’ goes to die.”
 
The church of Jesus Christ does not and must not fall prey to the idolatry of privacy. A nuclear family would be considered incredibly dysfunctional if they did not share joys and sorrows with one another. Can you imagine a family where the individuals did not know what was going on in each other’s lives? Where siblings didn’t visit each other in the hospital? Where they never had meals together? None of us would consider such a family healthy. And yet family is one of Paul’s metaphors for the church in the New Testament (1 Timothy 3:15, Galatians 6:10).

We are called in Romans 12:15 to “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” That means that as a church family, we rejoice when others get pregnant, even if that’s not been possible for us. It means that when someone else gets a promotion and we would give almost anything to just have a job, we rejoice.  We are called to see other’s happiness and praise God for it.
 
We’re also called to mourn with those who mourn. We live in a world where there is death, cancer, divorce, depression, betrayal - in short we live in a fallen world, stuck in between Genesis 3 and Revelation 22. As a church family, how do we respond to all the symptoms of this fallenness? We are called in Galatians 6:2 to “Bear one another’s burdens.” We are not designed to go through difficulty and sorrow alone. This means we have long phone calls, that we stay up to date, that we share tears, that we have vulnerable conversations, and importantly, that our front doors to our homes open often.

I believe that hospitality is the simplest and most ancient way to keep Section 6 of the covenant. Hospitality also happens to be a great litmus test for your ecclesiology (ie, your theology of the church). Why do I say that? Because you would think it strange to have someone in your home simply because you happened to attend the same concert. But unless your family is particularly relationally strained right now, you would think it equally as strange to have a sibling or parent that you refuse to let inside your home. If you want to know if you view church as a concert you attend or a family you belong to, think about the last time you practiced hospitality. To be clear, I do not think every Christian needs to host extravagant meals, or have luxury living rooms. Some have limitations that make hospitality hard (those with studio apartments should hardly be expected to host big families!) But do you want to share your resources with your spiritual brothers and sisters, as you are able? That's the test.
 
The church is the only place on earth where joys are multiplied and sorrows are divided because of our unity in Jesus Christ. And this runs two directions! This part of the covenant not only is calling us to do this to others, but for others in the church to do this to us. It may be work to share others’ joys and sorrows, but it pays off with incredible dividends when we receive the same (see Mark 10:30). The local church has been there for me in my best and worst times, and I can personally attest to the serious joys involved in Jesus' promise here. I hope you can as well.