Our Covenants – A Blueprint for the Present and a Seed for Future Generations, by Bob Tedesco
Background
Each of our communities, as well as the whole of the Sword of the Spirit, could be described by a long list: we are a Christian community; a lay Christian community; an ecumenical Christian community; a covenant community; or perhaps a Pentecostal community. From the beginning, these types of communities were called covenant communities. In describing and identifying what we are, covenant is the best word to pull out of that long list. It is distinct from other types of communities such as a prayer community or a religious community. Covenant is the best descriptor.
There are many things that we as Christians hold to that are only mentioned a couple or a few times throughout all of Scripture. Covenant, however, is mentioned 298 times in the Scriptures. Clearly, God is a covenant-making God. It is part of his nature, and in covenant community one of our intentions is to reflect that part of his nature.
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We believe that the Lord has called us into covenant with him and with this people. We have had numerous prophecies that have initiated and sustained that understanding. Here are some excerpts:
“I am making a covenant with you… this covenant is part of my plan to renew my church…”
“Yes, I have called you together in a covenant that is of great significance for the life of my people throughout the world, and I want you to bind yourselves to me and show forth your loyalty to me. I want you to come to me under this covenant, submit yourselves to my service, lay down your lives for the mission that I have given you.”
Exodus 19:5 says,
“Now therefore, obey my voice and keep my covenant and be my possession.”
It could be said here that the prophecies are for us, for those to whom they were spoken. It could also be said that the Scripture given is for the Old Testament folks, or more narrowly, for those that the prophet addressed.
We would not say that all Christians or Christian groups should sit down and write a covenant, but we do think we have something to contribute in this area. Furthermore, since the Bible is broken into the Old and New Testaments (covenants), it may be the case that the Lord does have certain expectations on his New Testament people based on his covenant with us, sealed by the blood of his Son.
We have been led in our local communities to attempt to identify and summarize that greater covenant and to commit ourselves together in covenant relationships.
Pertinent Questions
What are the needs in society today? How is the Lord addressing those needs? What is there about our call that is unique, or important or prophetic? Society today is increasingly unstable, increasingly disconnected. We see a profound example of this at the family level where many marriages have failed and many families have unraveled at the altars of individualistic hedonism and narcissism.
The Lord wants a people where unity is a blessing, and to be scattered is seen as a curse. It is not good when members of a family run in every direction, each pursuing his own path to self-fulfillment.
If we consider the marriage covenant and the divorce rate, we can identify and target one of the major threats to the stability and strength of the family, to society, and to the church. If making and keeping covenants strengthens and supports marriages, we would have ample reason for seeing value in our life together. It is the case that covenant communities have divorce rates far below that of most churches. That result is important and prophetic. The Lord is addressing a need.
Types of Covenants
There are many types of covenants: solemn, implied, simple, legal, simple-legal, limited duration, etc. An example of an implied contract is when a paper boy delivers a paper for weeks and is paid weekly. There is then an implied covenant that if he delivers the paper next week, he will get one week’s pay. It is also implied that his price will be the same.
I’d like to describe marriage as an expansive covenant: The vows may have been simple and limited, but there is a much broader understanding of what a man and woman are entering into as husband, as wife, as father, and as mother. There are legal, spiritual, and societal expectations that go beyond, “I will be a friend to you.” So too with us; when we agree to follow the Lord together, to be faithful to him and to each other, it is broader than the few elements that we identify in our local covenants. But, we would certainly like to focus on and get those elements to work. We would get a long way into the Christian life if we took our covenants seriously.
Serious Intentions Require Serious Tools
Difficult Assignments
Close brotherhood and Christian mission are often complex endeavors. We saw in the New Testament that John Mark did not complete his mission as Paul expected and was subsequently excluded from the next mission (Acts 15:38). Marriage is a complex journey which is begun (and not until) with marriage vows. We have “confessing” churches, and “rules” for religious orders. These defined relationships have taken an approach that puts them at odds with our shifting-sands culture. Our shifting-sands culture affects both marriage and mission.
At Stake
At stake are survival, continuity, endurance, longevity and inter-generational strength. Our word should be important; our covenants are a blueprint for the present as well as a seed for future generations. They are a mix of God and man, and express our best efforts to describe our intended response to him and to each other.
Summary
- Covenants are serious.
- Covenants are serious tools for serious intentions (community, discipleship, mission, all require covenant).
- Covenants are serious because our WORD should be serious.
- Covenant-breaking unravels relationships: the family, society and the Church.
- Covenant reflects the very nature of God.
- Covenant reflects the relationship of the Trinity.
- Restoring covenant is one of the key works of God being introduced to us and then shown through us (a gift from the Lord to meet a need).
- It is not the idea or the invention of some prophets of a movement.
- It is ancient, widely expressed in Scripture, and in Church life, in civil law, and in marriage.
- The inability to commit, the inability to honor and to keep your word is a modern fatal flaw… a need that is being addressed by God.
- Covenant is inter-generational but must be fully embraced in nature and fully embraced with character to benefit from its blessing.
[Quotes by Bob Tedesco excerpted from his Living Bulwark articles: August/September 2019 Issue, and September 2020 Issue.]
Renewal Communities Throughout Christian History, by Steve Clark
One of the signs of authentic spiritual renewal is the birth of new Christian communities. Some of these communities come together to live a fuller Christian life in a daily way. Some come together for apostolic service. Some do both. Their life together is a response to the Holy Spirit, leading Christians to love God and neighbour in a deeper way.
All the important periods of renewal gave rise to new communities. We might think of monasteries [such as the Benedictines] as communities of priests who live together to worship God and often run schools, parishes, and the like. But history tells us that these monastic communities are an outgrowth of a broader renewal movement that touched many individuals, most of whom did not live in communities. Most monasteries were at first lay communities.
The early Middle Ages likewise saw a movement of renewal. It has been described as the first evangelical renewal because of its emphasis on preaching the Gospel. This renewal gave rise to the communities we know as the mendicant orders – Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, as well as lay communities, such as third order groups, confraternities, and associations, often made up of married people.
The same development of community life came out of the other periods of renewal and reform in the sixteenth century, the religious renewal of the early nineteenth century, and surprisingly enough, our own time. The decline in church life is more evident today. Yet this is also a time of renewal, as witnessed by the proliferation of communities worldwide. While some of these are celibate communities, most are lay and are predominantly made up of married and single people. The Sword of the Spirit is a community of communities – with some 95 plus covenant communities and more than a 100 movements in 28 countries, with a unity based on common teaching, mission, structure, and way of life.
Covenant communities are outgrowths of the long tradition of Christian communities, and they share its characteristics. They are first of all based on a call. Sometimes it is a call to a particular spirituality, sometimes to a way of life with special features, sometimes to a particular service. Those who belong to such communities do so because they have experienced a call from God to live the life of the Gospel in a particular way, according to a special charism or vocation. They take on special commitments and ways of living that flow from that call. These do not involve requiring more than the Gospel but like the commitments involved in marriage, are a way to live out the Gospel in faithfulness to a particular call not all Christians share.
Covenant communities are also based on a special commitment that gives them stability so a communal life can be built. Covenant communities make a commitment in the form of a covenant, a mutual promise to seek the Lord according to their particular call.
Such commitments are commitments to one another and to a common way of life. Traditionally, these have been commitments to a rule. We make commitments so we can count on one another as we live for the Lord, so that we will persevere in our good intentions, and so that we can expect the help of others to call us on. When we are helped to do what we believe we are called to do and have committed ourselves to do, we are not being coerced but supported.
[Source of quote from Steve Clark, excerpted from his article in the September 2020 Issue of Living Bulwark.]
God’s Faithfulness and Our Response, by Tom Gryniewicz
As we give thanks and look back on the Lord’s working with us in covenant community in Ann Arbor over the past 50 years, we can say with the Psalmist “Come and hear all who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for me.” (Psalm 66:16).
Whether we’ve been here from the first charismatic prayer meeting (which began in 1967), the first community covenant commitments made (September and November 1970), and many other covenant commitments made by people joining us over the past 50 years, we’ve all had the same experience. We can each recall how the Lord led us to covenant community, how he had people speak words from the Lord that were formed just for each of us, and how his Spirit made us want to be with such people in community together. And we know how the Spirit revealed to us how close God wanted to be with us together as a people. Maybe someone gave a prophecy to the whole group that we knew was especially for us. Maybe the Spirit brought us to see our sins so that we could really see his mercy. Maybe he had someone speak a word of knowledge or wisdom that no one could know except for you and God. Maybe he did it suddenly in our Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and maybe he showed it to us as we lived out our “Yes” in the months that followed.
However, God chose to call each of us, we know it was specifically for us, and when we said yes, we knew that he was calling us to a life of faithfulness. And now 50 years later, we witness God’s faithfulness to uphold that covenant. So let me say, Come and hear me tell you what he has done for me.”
I wasn’t present at the first covenant commitment ceremony in 1970 because I was stationed at that time on a U.S. Navy Vessel at sea. But I was present at the first charismatic prayer meeting held in Ann Arbor in 1967 and I experienced God preparing us over the next two years to want to choose him above all else. Right from the start he showed us that it was not what we did that mattered as much as joining him in what he was doing. I remember visiting various local churches and people’s homes in those two years to share what God was doing to bring renewal through new life in the Spirit (being baptised in the Holy Spirit), spiritual gifts, and Christian community. And I would often see or hear someone respond with yearning that they too wanted that closeness to God.
As the first Thursday night prayer meetings grew from 12 people in November of 1967 to hundreds over the following year – many came from Michigan, Ohio, and even Canada! – we “regular” attendees who lived in Ann Arbor felt the need to begin meeting on an additional night of the week to have a chance to focus on our own spiritual growth and worship of the Lord. A few of us also met together outside of these prayer meetings to seek the Lord for what he wanted to do with us all as a local charismatic group.
When I graduated from the University of Michigan, I immediately went into the U.S. Navy as my friends in Ann Arbor continued their weekly prayer meetings. One day on my ship, the captain sent word that I had a ship-to-shore radio phone call. As I went to answer it I thought, “This must be something big.” because the only other calls I was aware of was when the Admiral told us he was helicoptering out to inspect our ship at sea, and when we were instructed to stay out at sea to ride out a hurricane. It was someone from the Ann Arbor prayer group calling to let me know that God was inviting them to bind themselves together to him in something called a “Covenant,” and could I pray with them that we would understand what it all means and be able to respond to it. I never forgot how seriously God took that offer to make a commitment to follow his covenant with us. My unusual long distance call led to a long distance prayer, and the prayer group was able to accept God’s invitation 50 years ago and make the first public commitments to a common way of life together in covenant Christian community.
After I completed my time in the navy, I returned to Ann Arbor and was able to publicly affirm my own formal commitment to that same way of life in Christian community. The community was much bigger than when I left. And it had adjusted as needed to care for the growing number of people by establishing small groups, one on one pastoral support, and formal leaders chosen to coordinate this care.
The community asked me to serve in leadership along with the other community coordinators, and I worked together for many years with other men and women called by the community to lead and give pastoral support. So I was able to experience first-hand, during both easy and difficult times, the character of these people. Although not everything they did worked the way they wanted, I never had any reason to doubt their intention to do what they thought would help build God’s kingdom. Over the years, we listened to the Spirit, sought input, worked for consensus, and asked forgiveness when needed. It reminded me that if we want to remain a community committed to doing God’s will, we need community members and leaders who always look to the Holy Spirit and pray that God always stays very close to us as it says in Psalm 80:17, ”Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you made strong for yourself. Then we will never turn back from you.”
God did many things with us over these 50 years – including running an ecumenical Christian school, publishing New Covenant magazine, composing and distributing our own worship music records (LP records to Cassette tapes to CD’s to MP3’s), and having community members sell their homes and buy houses to cluster together in neighborhoods. It still amazes me that when my family sold our house to build a new one in a cluster of community houses, I had groups of men come every night for two weeks to put multiple coats of paint over the fresh dry wall of my two story house.
And the Lord spoke freely in prophecy to us and continues to support us this way to this day in the midst of the worldwide pandemic. So many of the prophetic words we received were meant to encourage us and remind us of what we already knew – God’s love and care for us. Yet, like a good father, he also warned us about harder things to come.
I remember at one of our community anniversary celebrations, Bruce Yocum gave a prophetic word during the anniversary prayer meeting. The Lord said he had lifted us up as a community and he would raise us even higher. But the Lord also warned that there would come a time when we would experience being cast down to the ground and trampled upon, and that he would raise us up again if we only remained faithful to him through it all. It was a dramatic and stunning word. But like many other prophetic words from the Lord, it was tucked away in the back of our minds because we couldn’t imagine what it could mean – until it happened. I often think how hard or even impossible it would be to try to do God’s work without God’s word and guidance. It surely is an example of how God equips and leads us as a people in exercising the spiritual gifts he gives us.
“I want to give my life fully to God and live as a member of this community.”
There are many other important things that God has taught us through our experience of community life together and the working of the Holy Spirit in our midst. Some examples include the hidden undergirding over all the years of the community intercession team who regularly prayed, fasted, and did spiritual warfare, the hard work of single mothers and fathers raising their children alone, the encouragement and strength we got from honoring each other publically, the joy we experienced from wholesome speech and entertainment, the unifying force of our common Lord’s Day Celebrations locally and throughout the world, the “sandpaper ministry” of speaking the truth in love to one another in our daily household life together, the sharing of our resources, money and possessions, the honesty of repentance among spouses and families, the healing we received when we worship God as he deserves to be worshipped, and so much more. It all comes back to the initial call that each of us experienced when we each made our covenant promise to God and one another as we each stood and said, “I want to give my life fully to God and live as a member of this community.”
By God’s grace we continue to rejoice and give thanks for the gift of covenant Christian community and God’s faithfulness to us.
[Source of quote from Tom Gryniewicz’s article in the November 2020 Issue of Living Bulwark.]
Image credit: Scripture quote from Jeremiah 31:33, on a textured background by © NejroN Photo, from Bigstock.com, design by Living Bulwark graphic artist.
The Sword of the Spirit is a network of charismatic and ecumenical covenant communities and movements around the World.