What is a church covenant?

Question 09036.

A church covenant is a written statement of the promises members of a congregation make to God and to one another about how they will live together. It is not a statement of faith, which sets out what a church believes. It is a statement of commitment, setting out what the members undertake to do.

Baptists and independent congregations have used them for four centuries, and a good many churches that once had one have quietly lost it. I want to explain what these documents are for, whether Scripture warrants them, and why I think recovering the practice would do most congregations good.

What a Church Covenant Contains

The wording varies, but the content is remarkably consistent. Members typically promise to walk together in love, to attend the gatherings of the church faithfully, to pray for one another, to give as God enables, to bring up their children in the faith, to seek the salvation of family and neighbours, to live honestly and soberly in the world, and to submit to the discipline of the church.

Most also include promises about how conflict will be handled: to avoid gossip, to go directly to a brother who has offended, and to be slow to take offence. A good church covenant reads less like a legal contract and more like a set of vows, which is exactly what it is meant to be.

What you will not usually find is doctrine. The covenant assumes the statement of faith rather than repeating it, which is why the two documents belong together and why a church with one and not the other is only half equipped.

Where the Practice Came From

English Separatists in the late sixteenth century began forming congregations by covenant because they had no other way of doing it. Having withdrawn from the parish system, they could not become a church by geography, so they became one by agreement: a body of believers binding themselves together before God. The 1596 True Confession describes exactly this, and the first Baptist congregations followed the pattern.

The practice crossed the Atlantic and became near universal among Baptists there, which is why the best known church covenant in the English speaking world is the one J. Newton Brown produced in 1853 and which appeared in countless Baptist manuals. In Britain the tradition thinned out during the twentieth century along with membership itself, and many congregations now have nothing of the kind.

Is There Biblical Warrant?

There is no New Testament command to write one, and I would not pretend otherwise. What there is instead is a pattern of God’s people binding themselves publicly to obedience. In Nehemiah 9:38 the returned exiles say, because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing, and the princes, Levites and priests set their seal to it. Joshua 24 has the people declaring their commitment and Joshua making a covenant that day.

The Hebrew word berith underlies all of this, and it always involves binding parties to obligations. In the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 8:5 says the Macedonians first gave themselves to the Lord and then by the will of God to us, which is precisely the movement a church covenant expresses. Add the sheer number of one another commands, and a document that spells out what those obligations look like in practice is hardly an innovation.

Why a Church Covenant Helps

It makes expectations explicit. Most congregations have unwritten assumptions about what membership involves, and unwritten assumptions are precisely the things new members do not know and long standing members disagree about. Writing them down is an act of honesty toward everyone who joins.

It also gives church discipline something to stand on. When a member has promised, in front of the congregation, to attend, to submit to discipline and to seek reconciliation, a later conversation about failure has a reference point that is neither arbitrary nor personal. Without a church covenant, correction easily comes across as one person’s opinion about how somebody ought to behave.

Legitimate Concerns

The obvious danger is legalism. A document listing behaviours can drift into a code by which people measure themselves and each other, and the older covenants sometimes contain cultural specifics, on alcohol in particular, that go beyond what Scripture requires. Any church covenant needs to distinguish clearly between biblical obligation and local preference.

A second concern is that it becomes a dead letter. In many churches the covenant is read once a year, everybody nods, and nothing whatever follows. That is worse than not having one, because it teaches the congregation that solemn promises to God are ceremonial. If a church is going to use a covenant, it should teach it, refer to it and act on it.

A third is that people sign it without understanding. A candidate for membership who is handed a document at the door and asked to agree has not made a promise in any meaningful sense. The covenant should be worked through in the membership conversations, with the difficult clauses explained rather than glossed over.

A fourth objection is sometimes raised on theological grounds: that the language of covenant belongs to God’s dealings with His people and should not be borrowed for an agreement between Christians. I understand the concern and I do not share it. Scripture uses covenant language of marriage and of agreements between people as well as of God’s own commitments, and nobody supposes that a wedding vow rivals the new covenant.

Covenant and Membership Together

The two belong to each other. Church membership without a covenant tends to become a list of names, and a church covenant without membership has nobody to bind. Taken together they answer the question a great many British evangelicals cannot answer: what exactly did I commit to when I joined this church?

This is where I would push back gently on those who regard formal membership as a human invention. The New Testament assumes a definable body of people with recognised leaders, known members and a boundary that can be crossed in both directions. My articles on church membership and on whether membership is biblical or invented set out the case in full.

There is a further benefit that only shows up over time. A congregation that has publicly promised particular things to one another has a shared memory to appeal to when circumstances get difficult. In a painful church meeting, or in a season of decline, being able to say that we promised to walk together in love is worth a great deal more than an appeal to general principle.

When a Church Covenant Is Broken

Everyone breaks it, which is worth saying plainly. Every member of my congregation, myself included, falls short of promises like these every week. The covenant is not a performance standard by which we hold our place; it is a description of the life we are aiming at together, and it should be read in the light of grace rather than as an audit.

What changes matters is settled refusal. A member who has promised to attend and has not been seen for a year, and who declines every approach, has not simply failed; he has withdrawn. That is where the covenant and the process of church discipline meet, and the promise made earlier is what makes the later conversation possible rather than intrusive.

Writing or Revising One

If your church is drafting a covenant, keep it short enough to be read aloud and remembered. Ground every clause in Scripture and be able to show the reference. Use plain modern English rather than borrowed Victorian cadences, which sound impressive and communicate very little to anyone under fifty. Involve the members in the drafting so that it belongs to the congregation rather than to the leadership.

Then use it. Read it when new members are received, refer to it in preaching when the relevant duties come up, and take it seriously when it is broken. A church covenant that is lived is a quietly powerful thing. My separate article on whether church covenants are biblically required takes up the question of obligation directly, and the NET Bible notes on Nehemiah 9 are useful on the written covenant there.

So, now what?

If your church has a covenant, find it and read it slowly this week. Most members have never done so, and a good many will discover promises they had forgotten making. Ask yourself which clause you are currently failing, and do something about that one rather than all of them.

If your church has no covenant, raise it with your leaders. Ask what a new member is actually promising when they join, and whether anyone could say. That conversation on its own is worth having, whatever the outcome. What did you promise your congregation, and would they say you had kept it?

And this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

2 Corinthians 8:5 (ESV)