Why We use a Membership Covenant (Part 2 of 5)

A Signed Covenant is Counter to the Typical Church Culture and Helps Develop Koinonia Fellowship:

I do believe in a signed membership covenant because I think it’s faithful to Biblical Koinonia Fellowship. With churches on every street corner it is way too easy for people to hop from church to church. They tend to hop from church to church for several reasons, and not all of them are necessarily bad. But at the end of the day the opportunity to church hop reinforces a mentality that church is nothing more than a country club that provides services and spiritual goods, and their interest is merely a consumer’s interest. When we approach the church of the Bible we find a brotherhood. There were not churches on every street corner. So these guys were bound to each other like survivors in a life-raft on a hurricane tossed ocean. They needed each other, they loved each other, and they protected each other. At the end of the day we should view ourselves in the same way as flesh and blood brothers, not patrons of the same country club. Our loyalty should be to each other as family, not to the institution.

One of the things that I’ve seen happen in the Life Groups these past few months is the formation of true Koinonia Fellowship. The church is starting to become a tight-knit family, and that’s awesome to see! There has been healthy debate, and some members have had some disagreements with other members about the right way to pursue ministry, but everyone understands that they’ve made a binding commitment to each other. And everyone is seriously trying to work through those issues TOGETHER.

The reason I like a signed membership covenant is because you can talk about the formation of koinonia fellowship, and people will nod their heads and think that they understand it when they really don’t. As long as you have it in the back of your head that you can casually check out and go somewhere else, then you are kept from forming that relationship. A marriage is no marriage at all as long as both parties keep the reservation in the back of their heads that they can always get a divorce. A signature on a piece of paper is a person giving his word to certain things. We can buy a car on financing with nothing more than a signature. We can buy a house on mortgage with a signature. In our culture today when we make a binding commitment to something… we sign our name to a piece of paper that commits us to that thing. But when it comes to making a binding commitment to a church, one of the MOST important decisions we could ever make, we do it with a verbal commitment, a nod of the head, and a wink of the eye. Every church on every street corner is attempting to lower the bar in terms of a binding commitment to a church because every church is trying to lure, entice, draw, and attract as many people as possible to their church. It’s the whole megachurch mentality run amok. Every pastor is attempting to build his own empire. So there are churches that are attempting to lure and entice our brothers away from our church so that they can build their own megachurches. In doing this, they are inadvertently tampering with our church’s ability to develop true koinonia fellowship with each other, because to develop this koinonia will take time and energy. Koinonia doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years… The megachurch culture is attempting to build a large building with a lot of attendees in total disregard of Koinonia fellowship. However, a signed covenant means that people can’t easily and flippantly disregard their commitment to koinonia fellowship at our church when the church down the street opens up a really cool new ministry.