Why do we make covenants?

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1 Samuel, bible, Bob Deffinbaugh, christian, christianity, church, church covenant, church covenants, church membership, covenant, John Piper, local church, Mark Dever, Nehemiah, scripture, theology

David and Jonathan by Rembrandt

Matt, in his comment on my last post, asked why I thought churches should have covenants at all.  That’s a good question.

Men like John Piper and Mark Dever and others have already made careful, thorough arguments for the use of church covenants.  I don’t think that I can improve on what they’ve written, and I don’t intend to try.  I’ll link to those at some point in this series so you can read them for yourself.

Having said that, though, I want to try to answer Matt’s question using a somewhat different approach than I’ve seen elsewhere.  I want to offer a rationale, composed of three different strands of thought–biblical, practical, and historical–for making and using church covenants.  To keep this to a reasonable length, I’ll only consider the biblical strand today.  My goal is to establish that generally speaking, it’s good and right to make covenants.

Church covenants in Baptist history

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baptist, baptist encylopaedia, christian, christianity, church, church covenant, church covenants, church history, church membership, covenant, Hebrews, history, James, scripture, The Baptist Encyclopedia, theology, William Cathcart

Back before the ice storm hit, I was planning to blog a little about church covenants.  I wrote the first post and opened it with some questions.  I received a few responses, which I really appreciated.  I would love for even more of you to go back to that post and answer the questions I asked.

But that was as far as I got.  The next night, freezing rain began to fall; the night after that we lost our power and spent five chilly days and nights in the dark.  I’ve spent a lot of my time since the power came back either cleaning up or helping others clean up the damage from the ice storm.

Now I’m thinking about church covenants again, partly because I’m on a committee assigned the task of reviewing and revising a portion of our church constitution.  Included in that portion is our church covenant, which is currently a standard document used by many Baptist churches.  I say “used by many Baptist churches” but in reality very few churches, including ours, actually use their covenant.  That wasn’t always the case.

Great high school basketball, Neal E. Boyd, and Blake DeWitt… all in one place, all on one night

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America's Got Talent, basketball, Blake Dewitt, Cape Girardeau, entertainment, high school basketball, Los Angeles Dodgers, Missouri, MLB, MSHSAA, Neal Boyd, neal e. boyd, Sikeston, sports, television, tv

For local residents, a much hyped basketball game at the sold out Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau Wednesday night offered a smorgasbord of small town delights.  In addition to the game, Sikeston’s two most famous residents were on hand.  “America’s Got Talent” winner Neal Boyd sang the national anthem, and Dodgers second baseman Blake DeWitt was honored at halftime.

The Game

Two of the best high school teams in this part of the state, Scott County Central (ranked #2 in Missouri Class 1) and Sikeston (#8 in Class 4), met on the court for the first time in 38 years, even though only 7.5 miles separate the two schools.  And it was a barn burner.  I won’t tell you the outcome, in case you don’t already know, and want to watch the game.

Now having said that, I have to tell you this–I wasn’t there.  We had our weekly prayer meeting, and I had a committee meeting afterward.  But thanks to the wonders of modern technology, my wife and I were able to watch the whole thing, from Neal’s stirring rendition of the national anthem, through the halftime award presentation and interview with Blake DeWitt, all the way to the game’s exciting finish.  The entire webcast is still available here in the KFVS 12 video archive.  You can watch it all, or just the parts that interest you.

I want to see 2 things clearly today

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Christ, christian, christianity, religion, sacrifice, sin

1. The unvarnished ugliness of my own sin.

2. The indescribable beauty of Christ’s sacrifice for it.

Have you ever wondered what 3 inches of ice on a twig looks like?

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electricity, freezing rain, ice, ice storm, Missouri, photos, power failure, power lines, power outage, severe weather, Sikeston, storm, storm damage, trees, weather, winter, winter storm

My pastor’s wife took this picture.  You can see just how thick the ice was.

I tried to describe the intensity of our winter storm in my last post.  No one around here, including the old-timers, have ever seen an ice storm that caused so much damage.  I still haven’t seen an official precipitation total, but the guys in our utility crews think we received between 2 and 3 inches of ice (freezing rain), which accumulated mainly on limbs and power lines.