It was a cold day in Montreat, North Carolina and it had just begun to snow.  Two days before I was on a sunny beach in Charleston. Two days before I didn’t have Strep Throat.  It exploded in my tonsils a day after preaching at Second Presbyterian and the Monday morning that I was supposed to set off to meet a half-dozen students in Montreat for the winter college conference.  Even with a blood test and throat culture, the doctor wrote it off as just a virus, so I given some weak pain medication and told to ride it out. I now shuffled quickly through the blowing gusts and snow like an anxious zombie to the conference center to check in. I wouldn’t have come if it weren’t for the fact that I was leading a discussion group, daily gatherings of 30 students designed to help process the speakers’ messages.  Apart from that managing that responsibility, however, I was basically useless.

Fortunately, I had the joy of seeing our Charleston students step in to pick up the slack. They grocery shopped and made a warm lunch to feed a 100 hungry students from the other South Carolina campuses. They organized carpools to make sure students could always find rides back to mountaintop cabin where we stayed. And can you believe this? They attended every single speaker and workshop available to them, using every opportunity to learn more as well as speak the truth of the Gospel into the lives of other students at the conference.

This demonstration of leadership continued into the next week during the first day of classes when we launched our back-to-class outreach campaign.  Eight students spent much of a rainy day handing out 800 spiritually provocative fliers and working a coffee table giving away over 100 cups of good, free coffee. Students used those interactions to invite their peers to the Journey large group gathering and to have any conversations people were willing to have about faith and Christianity.

Even now, as the second semester is beginning, our student leadership in the Journey is talking about training up new leaders for next year. Please pray that our discernment would be Spirit-led and that as we prepare to say goodbye to our seniors, God would raise new leaders in their stead to be mature ambassadors for Jesus Christ.

This Sunday, our church membership class will be the first to be introduced to a “Covenant of Commitment” between themselves and the church. We’ve rather rapidly experienced the spiritual and practical benefits of making our membership class more rigorous, theologically deeper, and required for the joining the church. Prior to that, we saw everything from people joining and dropping out in a matter of months to non-Christians joining (Why this phenomenon, you may ask? Since our church community was so welcoming, they said, they could overlook the Jesus-Son-of-God thing).

It’s our hope that this covenant will not only clarify and confirm the investment we expect from people joining the church, but also make it clear what should be expected from the church receiving committed people to its community. I think this is important because mainline churches often seem to operate under the assumption that, apart from grave heresy, they can do as they please so long as there is reasonable unity with the elders and staff. However, a church that covenants with its members binds itself in a sacred contract to uphold its end of the promises. Should that church fail to live up to those promises, members have indisputable grounds for calling the leadership of the church to account.

To be honest, I’ll be excited when the first person does. It will likely be a healthy learning experience for this congregation in renaissance.

Thoughts on the covenant below? It’s not a document that’s written in stone, so feel free to make suggestions.

I, _________________________________________ as a follower of Jesus Christ, covenant with Second Presbyterian Church, my God, and myself to:

Walk with God daily in Bible study, prayer, and following Christ’s teachings in turning away from my sins and pursuing a holy life.

Invest myself in sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with non-Christians.

Be involved in discipleship outside of Sunday worship because I recognize the need for accountability and community in my life.

Receive from those appointed over me accountability, counsel, and/or correction for my actions. Specifically, my actions that do not reflect how Jesus teaches me in the Bible.

Give generously the time, resources, and giftedness that God has blessed me with so that the Gospel is advanced and God is glorified.

Likewise, the leadership of Second Presbyterian Church covenants to:

Teach the Word of God to the best of our ability.

Consistently preach the Gospel in our words and actions and from the pulpit.

Offer the necessary programs and opportunities that will lead to your spiritual growth and maturity.

Provide care in sickness, counsel in crisis, and guidance in what it means to follow Jesus and His commandments.

Make programmatic, financial, staff, and leadership decisions with the advancement of the Gospel and the glory of God solely in mind.

In signing this, I affirm my membership vows and place myself in a covenant with my church to hold me accountable to those vows, even as I hold the church accountable for its vows, so that together we can be the body of Christ demonstrating the Gospel of Jesus Christ to our neighbor, city, and world.