Bryan Black's Story

Two summers ago, I headed out with our Youth Choir for its annual mission tour. The return trip from Texas brought us through my hometown of Birmingham, so naturally we gave a concert and spent the night sleeping on the gymnasium floor of Bluff Park UMC, my home church. Birmingham has become a good deal more sophisticated over the last fifteen years and the church has built an imposing new sanctuary that dwarfs the one I knew as a child. But in concert, I stood facing the choir just a few feet from the baptismal font in the old Sanctuary where my parents had presented me for baptism forty years ago. They made a covenant with God and the congregation on my behalf that I would be kept in the faith. Many of the people who made the promises and lived the examples are no longer with us including Mrs. McCracken, the kindhearted woman who taught the first children’s choir I ever sang in. She wasn’t there to see me come home with my own crop of teenage singers, but her promises, my parent’s promises and God’s faithfulness revealed the power of a covenant unbroken by time and change.

Brent Vicars' Story

A covenant that I have is with a former student from my first youth ministry. I meet him when he was 14, and I was his Sunday school teacher. He was a nice enough kind, kind of a loner, but in need of some direction. When he was 15, I asked him to come to work for me in my business as my first employee. He ended up working for me for 4 years until he left for college, going from just a kid I hired to answer the phone and send out the mail, to a trusted partner and someone who I not only mentored, but also someone who taught me a lot as well. While working together, we discovered a mutual love of the outdoors, and started backpacking together all over TN and NC on weekend trips with friends and my family. When he left for college, I kept in touch with him, spending time with him when he was home from school, giving him advice when he was in trouble, and trying to help him achieve his goals for life. Shortly after he left for college his sophomore year, his parents divorced and he went into a major depression. I called him often, even drove to his school one weekend to take him to dinner, and tried to help him see that his was not his fault. Eventually things got better, and even I after I left the business world for full time ministry, he and I still kept in contact and still spent time together. His junior year of college he called me up, stressed out about finishing his course work and graduating, and asked if we could take a 3 day backpacking trip. This became the first of our now yearly trips around the holidays. Even though he has graduated for the University of TN and is now making his life in Knoxville, we still keep in touch. I have since moved to Marietta, and don’t see him as often, but we still talk, he still calls and asks for advice, and we still get together each year for three days around Christmas to go backpacking. I have a covenant with this young man to be his mentor, and it is one I take seriously and thank God for. Even though he is normally the one calling for advice, I am the one who seems to be learning the most.

Betzy Mitchell's story

When my daughter was in Elementary School she struggled mightily. Everything was difficult and frustrating. By the end of the third grade it became clear to me that the public school system was not able to meet her educational needs. So I started looking for the answer. I looked at private schools, schools affiliated with churches and even a boarding school, trying desperately to avoid the call I knew God had put on my heart. Homeschooling.

I knew to take on the task of homeschooling my daughter meant giving up my at-home-mom time. No more tennis on Thursday mornings. No more racketball at the club on Fridays. No more lunches with the girls…… Homeschooling my daughter meant putting her first and I knew God wanted me to learn this lesson.

It was an incredibly hard year for us both. My daughter missed her friends and I did too! I often railed at God accusing Him of insisting I take on this herculean task without given me the tools for success. And somehow, yelling at God allowed me to hear His voice. Persevere. Hold fast.

At the end of the year she could read! And add, subtract, multiply and divide. I was so proud of her accomplishment and knew she was ready to tackle all the challenges ahead.

My daughter is in college now. You’d never know she didn’t learn how to read until she was 9 years old. She is doing exceptionally well and dreams of being a Supreme Court Judge! But more importantly, she thanks me often for the year we spent together. She learned to read and I learned the joy of sacrifice.

Forrest Cate's Story

As a junior high member of Pittman Park MYF, I was very active in the church. With no doubt some degree of pride, I was representative to Administrative Council and was often asked to speak at youth events and functions. I was pretty much in with the cool crowd.

Our neighbors down the street, who decidedly weren't in the cool crowd, often rode with us to church on Wednesdays and Sundays and to youth events. I remember one particular incident when I was adamant with my mother that I didn't want to have to car pool with them because of the potential damage to my image they might cause. "Don't give me all this Christianity stuff, if you can't give your neighbors a ride to church," my mother rebuked me in no uncertain terms. It remains a seminal reminder for me of the covenant of Church Membership.

Linda LeSueur's Story

Years ago I felt called by God to become a teacher. I was blessed by a great college experience and hired by Cobb County before I had even graduated. I loved my students and all the challenges and rewards that came from working with children and seeing them get excited with the learning process. Once our family came along I know that I could not be the teacher I needed to be and the mother I needed to be at the same time. I prayed for guidance and God directed me to preschool in the church when my youngest child went to kindergarten. I had grave doubts but I gave it a try. What a blessing God had in store for me! All these years later God has continued to bless my life with the wonderful relationships nutured through the Weekday staff, the parents and most of all the children. We help the children learn about God every day in the things that they see, hear, touch and taste. Jesus is their friend and they know him. They in turn help us see God through their joy and excitement over every new thing they learn and experience. I am so thankful for God’s direction in my life.

Walking in Covenant

The first time I walked a baptized baby up and down the aisle of the church I was moved in a powerful way.  To this day, every time I walk a child down the aisle I am touched at the depth of the event.  I whisper into that child's ear, "This is your family, and they love you."  It is at that one moment when we as the community remember our covenant with God and with each other and vow to order our lives in that promise.  Everyone of us are participants in that covenant.  

While being moved in that moment is understandable, I am never prepared when I see children that I have been a part of baptizing growing up and walking around the halls of the church.  It is at those moments when I ask, "Have I lived up to the promise I made the morning that baby was baptized."  This reminds me often that my life is part of something so much bigger.   

Georgia Rambo's story

One of the promises that I depend on is that God will always be with us. It’s not always easy. Sometimes I feel like Jacob, wanting to fight with God, especially when things don’t go my way. At times I want to be in control, I want my way, instead of letting God have His way.

Even though God promises always to be with us, at times I wonder whether God is really there when I need Him. I know the right way is to trust in God and have faith, but this can be hard. When I feel this way, I try to respond to God in the way that I pray. I just sit still, say nothing, and listen.

Arie Motschman's story

One of my covenants is with a 10-year-old immigrant girl who spoke not one word of English two years ago. She attends a school in my neighborhood where my child attended several years ago. For the past 8 years I have felt a pull to help a child from this school by reading to them and helping with homework, a relatively easy task to assume when I could go there weekly on my day off. This year, however, the only time allotted to me by the school is at 1:45 in the afternoons on one of the days I work. It is a constant challenge to find the time in my week to drive to the school, work with the child, and come back to work. It would be so much easier if it were around lunch time or at the beginning or end of the day. However, I have made a commitment to help this young girl. Our work together is not always as productive as I would like, but we have developed a relationship and she counts on me to be there. I covenant to make that sacrifice because of the blessings in my life and who God has called me to be.

Talking About Religion and Theology

From Death by Bread Alone by Dorothee Soelle:

"At that very moment I rubbed my eyes in astonishment and realized that I had been dead, that the way I had acted toward other people was empty, devoid of all genuineness, depth and authenticity. I had been wearing masks, playing out roles, going through the motions. I had thought I could handle this television interview in the same way I was accustomed to doing other things--like ticking off a list. Indeed, I had thought that I could avoid any risk of talking about myself. But it had not occurred to me that not to talk about myself would have made me do something worse--say nothing that was of substance.

I had thought that I could talk about religion and theology. But one of the strange things about the language of religion and theology is that it does not permit itself to be neutral, a mere instrumentality. When we use such language simply for the sake of using it, the result is sheer nonsense, garbled communication. The language of religion is the vehicle of collective experience and it is meaningful only when it speaks of experience and addresses itself to experience."

Cyndi McDonald's story

In high school I was part of the church's youth program, and was grateful for (although not adequately) the adults who gave their time and energy to making this a time of spiritual growth and fellowship for us. Although he didn't talk a lot or rough around much, we appreciated Bill (name changed) because he was always available as a chaperone or to drive a car load of teens to an event.

About three years after graduation I bumped into Bill. We spent a few minutes catching up, him asking about college and then describing the people in the youth group and some of the fun ways they were growing together. Before we left, Bill asked if I had any prayer requests. He said that he still prays for me every Thursday, and liked to personalize these prayers for youth and previous youth.

I was dumbfounded by the seriousness with which Bill took this commitment to pray for the youth. When people say, "I will pray for you" I sometimes wonder whether they truly will; in contrast, Bill’s matter-of-fact statement that he prayed for me every Thursday was humbling. I had received unexpectedly a gift of grace—I was part of a covenant.

Bill taught me about praying for one another. A commitment to pray for another person isn’t an empty promise, but a covenant, and God is present in the promise, in the prayers, and in the transformations in my relationships with others when we commit to praying with and for one another.

John Wesley's Covenant Service

Covenant services were an important part of early Methodist life, beginning with the first covenant service August 11, 1755. Wesley wrote in his Journal,

I explained once more the nature of such an engagement and the manner of doing it acceptably to God...After I had recited the tenor of the covenant proposal... all the people stood up, in testimony of assent, to the number of about eighteen hundred persons. Such a night I scarce ever saw before. Surely the fruit of it shall remain for ever.

Wesley held covenant services on a variety of occasions, but towards the end of his life tended to celebrate these around New Year's Day. In Wesley's time days were spent instructing those who would participate. The service included reading long exhortations to live lives completely dedicated to God and always concluded with Holy Communion. Since Wesley's death, the service has been greatly revised, but few changes have been made to the covenant prayer.
Source: The New Handbook of the Christian Year, by Hoyt L. Hickman et al., 1992 by Abingdon Press.

Prayer from John Wesley's Covenant Service

“Dearly beloved, the Christian life, to which we are called, is a life in Christ, redeemed from sin, and through him consecrated to God. Upon this life we have entered, having been admitted into that New Covenant of which our Lord Jesus Christ is mediator, and which He sealed with His own blood, that it might stand forever.

On one side, the Covenant is God’s promise that He will fulfill in and through us all that He declared in Christ Jesus, who is the Author and Perfecter of our faith. That His promise still stands we are sure, for we have known His goodness and proved His grace in our lives day by day.

On the other side we stand pledged to live no more unto ourselves, but to Him who loved us and gave himself for us, and has called us to serve Him that the purpose of His coming might be fulfilled.

From time to time, we renew our vows of consecration, especially when we gather at the Lord’s Table, but on this day we meet expressly, as generations of our fathers have met, that we may joyfully and solemnly renew the Covenant which bound them and binds us to God.

Let us then, remembering the mercies of God, and the hope of His calling, examine ourselves by the light of His Spirit, that we may see wherein we have failed or fallen short in faith and practice, and, considering all that this Covenant means, may give ourselves anew to God.”

Dictionary Definition

cov·e·nant

n.
1. A binding agreement; a compact.
2. Law
a. A formal sealed agreement or contract.
b. A suit to recover damages for violation of such a contract.
3. In the Bible, God's promise to the human race.

v. cov·e·nant·ed, cov·e·nant·ing, cov·e·nants
v.tr.
To promise by or as if by a covenant.
v.intr.
To enter into a covenant.