Are church covenants biblically required?

Question 9098.

A church covenant is a written statement of mutual promises that members make to God and to one another when they join a congregation. It usually speaks of walking together in love, of watching over one another, of attending faithfully, of contributing to the work, and of submitting to discipline where necessary.

Some churches read theirs aloud every month. Some have one framed in the vestibule that nobody has looked at since 1974. Others have never had one at all and function perfectly well. So the question is worth asking plainly: does the Bible require a church covenant, and if not, is there any good reason to have one?

What a church covenant actually is

The practice is largely a Baptist and Congregationalist inheritance. When separatist congregations formed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they had no bishop to constitute them and no parish boundary to define them. What made them a church was that believers voluntarily bound themselves together before God, and they wrote that binding down.

So a church covenant is not primarily a set of rules. It is a description of what members are promising each other. That distinction matters. A rulebook tells you what will happen if you misbehave; a covenant tells you what you have undertaken to do for the person sitting next to you.

The older documents are often striking. They speak of watching over one another in brotherly love, of praying for one another, of rejoicing at each other’s happiness, and of bearing each other’s burdens with tenderness. Reading one is a useful corrective to any idea that historic Baptist life was cold.

Does the Bible require a church covenant?

No. There is no command to write one, no apostolic example of one being drawn up, and no New Testament church that we know produced such a document. Anyone who tells you a church covenant is biblically mandated has gone beyond what is written, and that should be said clearly before anything else.

What Scripture does require is the substance the covenant tries to capture. Love one another. Bear one another’s burdens. Do not neglect to meet together. Obey your leaders. Confess your sins to one another. Restore the one caught in a transgression. Those commands are not optional, and every one of them assumes a settled body of believers who know to whom they belong.

So the honest position is that a church covenant is a human instrument for a divine obligation. It is permitted, it can be useful, and it must never be treated as though it carried the authority of Scripture.

The biblical principle behind the practice

The instinct behind a church covenant is thoroughly biblical even if the document is not. God has always dealt with His people covenantally, and the Old Testament records moments when Israel deliberately renewed its commitments in writing and in public. That does not transfer directly to the church, since Israel and the church are distinct in God’s programme, but the human instinct to say aloud what we are committing to is a sound one.

More directly, the New Testament assumes a defined membership. Paul tells the Corinthians to remove a man from among them, which is meaningless unless there is an among to be removed from. He speaks of a punishment inflicted by the majority. Discipline requires definition, and a church covenant is one way of making that definition explicit and voluntary rather than assumed and vague.

When a church covenant helps

It helps most at the front door. When someone joins, a covenant makes the expectations audible rather than leaving them to be discovered by accident three years later. Nobody should be surprised to learn that their church expects regular attendance, financial support, and a willingness to be corrected. Writing it down is a kindness.

It also helps in a crisis. When a church has to exercise discipline, the question always arises of what authority it has to do so. A congregation that can point to a promise the member freely made is on far better ground than one improvising a rationale under pressure. That is not legalism; it is fairness.

And it helps the leadership. A church covenant binds the elders and deacons as well, and a good one says so. In our congregation the membership holds the final say at church meetings, and the leadership is bound by decisions we would not have chosen. Written mutual obligation cuts in every direction or it is not mutual at all.

When a church covenant hinders

It hinders when it becomes a relic. A document read aloud by rote, or hanging on a wall unread, teaches the congregation that words can be solemn and meaningless at the same time, which is a poor lesson to learn in a church.

It hinders when it accumulates specifics that Scripture never required. Older covenants sometimes included total abstinence from alcohol or prohibitions on particular amusements. Whatever one thinks of those convictions, binding a conscience where God has not bound it is a serious matter, and a church covenant is exactly the sort of document that quietly does so.

And it hinders when it becomes a test of fellowship at a level Scripture does not warrant. The basis for genuine Christian fellowship is the gospel, a right view of God, and a high view of Scripture. A covenant that functions as a fifteenth article of faith has drifted well past its purpose.

How I would use one

Keep it short. Keep it to what Scripture actually requires. Let it be read and explained to every candidate for membership before they join rather than after. Revisit it as a congregation every few years, and be willing to change it, because a church covenant that cannot be questioned has become something other than a human instrument.

And make sure the church understands what it is not. It does not save anybody, it does not make the congregation a true church, and it does not carry the authority of the pastoral epistles. It is a set of promises between people who intend to keep them. On related ground see this companion piece on church covenants, what church membership is, and church discipline.

What Scripture puts in place of a document

If a church covenant is optional, what is not optional? Paul tells the Galatians to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2), and the writer to the Hebrews tells us not to neglect meeting together but to encourage one another (Hebrews 10:24-25). Those instructions assume people who are committed to particular other people.

The New Testament word for that shared life is koinonia, which means partnership or participation rather than sociability. It describes people holding something in common, and it is the substance a church covenant is trying to put into words.

So the test of any covenant is whether it produces koinonia or replaces it. A congregation with a beautifully worded document and no shared life has the shell without the creature. A congregation with deep shared life and no document has everything that matters.

What to do if yours needs revising

Start by reading it aloud at a members’ meeting and asking two questions of every clause. Does Scripture require this? And do we actually do it? Clauses that fail both tests should go, and it is better for a church to promise less and mean it than to promise more and quietly ignore it.

Then check the tone. Older documents can read as a list of prohibitions when the New Testament emphasis falls on positive obligation: love, encourage, bear, forgive, restore. A church covenant that describes what we will do for one another forms a congregation differently from one that lists what we will not do.

And keep it where people can find it. A covenant that exists only in a minute book from 1953 is not binding anyone, whatever its legal status.

Promises and the people who keep them

The deepest argument for writing anything down is that human memory is generous to itself. We remember what we intended rather than what we said, and over years a commitment made warmly at a members’ meeting becomes something rather vaguer in the recollection.

That is not cynicism about believers. It is an observation about all of us, and it is why Scripture is full of stones set up, feasts appointed, and words written for a generation to come. God knows we forget, and He has always been willing to give His people something they can look at.

So if your congregation keeps such a document, treat it as an aid to memory rather than as a legal instrument. Read it when new members join. Read it when the church is going through something difficult. The words themselves have no power; the people who mean them do.

So, now what?

If your church has a church covenant, take it off the wall and read it as a congregation. Ask whether you still mean it and whether it still says what Scripture says. If it binds where God has not bound, change it. If it has been forgotten, either revive it or retire it honestly, because a promise nobody remembers making is doing no work at all.

If your church has never had one, you are not deficient. But ask how your members learn what they are committing to, and whether that process leaves anyone guessing. The point was never the paper. The point is that people who have joined themselves to one another should know what they have joined.

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:2, ESV