Covenant Discipleship and growing in the faith
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Out of all the aspects of our Wesleyan heritage that have fallen by the wayside over the years, I think that serious attention to sanctification through holiness of heart & life may be the biggest loss. Thankfully, it's not a total loss.
Covenant Discipleship is a movement in the church that seeks to address that core need. It is simple, very un-programmatic, and focused on the Wesleyan concept of social holiness. That is, Wesley believed that all holiness (the conformity of one's heart, mind, and soul to Christ) had to be done in the company of others who could help to "watch over one another in love." For Wesley, that meant making the bands and class meetings a fundamental part of the Methodism of his day. And it is those Wesleyan forms of small group discipleship that Covenant Discipleship seeks to emulate.
The basic idea is that you gather in a group of 4 to 7 people and give an account of your discipleship over the past week. You go every week, as an absolute priority. And you agee to abide by a covenant document that the whole group writes together, and which includes a number of "acts of discipleship" oriented around works of devotion, worship, compassion, and justice. There is no need to buy the latest, hot new small group study. There is no need to frantically search for ways to make CD Groups "relevant" to "younger people." You don't even need Powerpoint. All you need is a willingness on the part of the group members to really engage in the work of their own sanctification.
CD is especially interesting to me, because I think it represents a willingness by one of our general boards and agencies (the GBOD) to commit to a form of ministry that is really seeking to embody a Wesleyan approach to discipleship. But at the same time, CD Groups are essentially a grass-roots movement in the church. There is no heavy-handed attempt to impose them from the top-down. They seem to spring up wherever a small group of people in a local church is willing to take its commitment to discipleship to the next level.
Steve Manskar at the GBOD is the Director of Accountable Discipleship. Check out his online resources, and I'm sure he'd enjoy hearing from anyone who is interested in finding more out about Covenant Discipleship.
As I reported previously in this post, Steve asked me sometime back to become a regular contributor to the Covenant Discipleship Quarterly. My column for the Spring 2007 - "The Pursuit of Happiness" - is online now. I'll highlight future columns as they appear. And FYI, the CDQ is a free publication that Steve would be happy to send you if you drop him a line.
posted by Andrew C. Thompson at 8:22 AM
4 Comments:
One of the things our church has planned is to start one CD group per year. Many members still don't know what Covenant groups are. Could I borrow parts of this (full attribution, of course) for the church newsletter? I's a good summary.
My years in a covenant discipleship varied in quality. The dynamics of the group have much to do with it. Encouragement is very important, or it quickly becomes "I'm ok, you're ok, now leave me alone." rather than "help me follow Christ".
Gary,
Thanks for your comments. Sure, feel free to use whatever portions of this post are helpful for your church newsletter. I'm glad to hear your congregation is working to establish some CD Groups. I also think the slow, steady approach is exactly the right pace to take. Only people who are willing to be serious about accountability & discipleship are really going to engage in a CD Group the way that it needs to be done.
I would encourage you to send Steve Manskar an e-mail to get all your CD Group folks on the mailing list for the Covenant Discipleship Quarterly. That would help to get them thinking about accountable discipleship in different ways, and it might just help to slowly influence others in your church.
You might also e-mail Steve about getting some informational brochures and pamphlets related to Covenant Discipleship. When I was getting some groups started at my last appointment, he sent me a very helpful packet of materials. Steve's e-mail can be found by clicking on the hypertext link on his name in the original blog post.
CD sounds like a smaller-scale equivalent of what the first generations of Baptists sought in the church covenants that they adopted and promulgated. The difference lies in that they expected an entire congregation to be a covenanting, discipling community. Oh, if only!!
Sounds like you are talking about something that the Emmaus Groups use called - Reunion Groups. You ask about study habits, ministry, etc. It is done in small groups, also.
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