Defense of an Old Fashioned Idea

Date: 02/15/2009 Series: Being the Church Sermon: Defense of an Old-Fashioned Idea Text: Acts 4:32-33 I stumbled across ARTICLE V of our church Constitution titled CHURCH COVENANT. Did you even know we have a Church Covenant? My friends, I have been in this church coming up on six years as of July. NEVER ONCE have we read this covenant together as a body. NEVER ONCE have we asked anyone to consider or affirm this as part of attaining church membership. NEVER ONCE have we referred to it as we evaluate our corporate life together. It is glued inside the back cover of most of our hymnals, but we never read it, never use it, never refer to it. It is an entire article of our church constitution, however it might as well not exist because we utterly neglect and ignore it. At this juncture, we need to do one of two things: either change our church constitution and remove this Old-Fashioned silliness about covenanting together and being members of one another or start taking it seriously And my friends, if we choose to dismiss this idea of covenanting together - if we decide to take membership too lightly - then we will take the church too lightly, we will take our responsibility to one another too lightly, we will take our mission to this world too lightly. No, what is most needed now in the church universal - and our church in particular - is a defense of this Old-Fashioned idea of Church Membership - of Covenanting together; of becoming, like the early church – one in mind, one in heart, one in purpose.