Community, Covenanting, Ballydowse, and Crested Butte

It seems I’m always trying to come up with new pictures, metaphors, and examples to explain what we’re doing with this church plant. Even the term “church plant” is a metaphor. Maybe it’s an inept metaphor, I don’t know. Anyway, I said when I first got here that this would be like that old car commercial, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” We’re not trying to imitate any one model of church life; we’re about new things.
But that’s not to say we are what my Jay calls “The Church-of-What’s-Happenin’-Now”. Clearly, we haven’t been that. I’ve been thinking about one of my favorite bands; I think they sort of clarify a bit of the background vision I have for who we’ll be.
Ballydowse comes out of the Jesus People USA Community in Chicago. Their name comes from a town of outcasts in The War of the Buttons. The music of Ballydowse is perhaps best described as a party of traditional Celtic, British drinking songs, klezmer, punk rock, and American folk. Add a little Tibetan throat singing, a didgeridoo, and singing bowls and you’re almost there. Layered on top of this eclectic musical mix are lyrics that find new and old images for God, the world, and everything else. They’re lyrics of protest, celebration, and seeking God’s justice in an aching world. Besides their own words, Ballydowse makes use of the writings of people like Eli Weisel, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Oscar Romero, and George McDonald. Infused through it all is a profoundly biblical sense of the world, even when, as in the book of Esther, God gets no mention by name.
What has this to do with my church? We’re not a band (I can just hear someone saying, “Are we? Did I miss a meeting or something?” No, we’re not). But, like Ballydowse, we’re not a community easily defined by any particular model of “doing church”. We’re pulling from every strand of the Family: from the evangelicals, the Roman Catholics, the Syrian Orthodox, the Presbyterians, the 6th century, the 21st century - name it, we’ve probably used something from that tradition or we probably will. We are willing to do so because we believe in “communion of the saints” (God’s people in all places and all times), and we’re connected to them all.
We’re world Christians. We can’t help it. Deeper than the technology connecting the planet (in good and bad ways) is the Spirit of God, who won’t allow us to escape our sisters and brothers. We have more in common with Vietnamese Christians than with unbelieving Americans. As world Christians, we accept that we are bound to the universal Church.
Another word for universal is catholic, and in that sense, we’re more catholic than the pope, because we accept the whole Church, in all its manifestations. We’re not Protestants (nothing to protest), but we are heirs of the Reformation, which emphasized the authority of scripture and the renewal of the Church. We’re Orthodox, since we hold to the faith expressed by the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. We’re in the Holiness tradition, because we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, both to sanctify us and to gift us for service. We’re Pietists, because we experience a personal relationship with Jesus. We’re communalists, because there is little to suggest Christians can be formed in any other way.
More than an institution, we’re weaving together a community here in Crested Butte. We borrow from all the strands of the Church, ancient and contemporary. Our only means of judging anything is by the Text and Tradition of the whole Church. At the same time, we don’t just imitate; we’re contributing our little bits of color and pattern. In our liturgy, in our small groups, in the ministry we do with children, in our work with compassion and justice, in our approach to evangelism, you can see the ancient threads and the contemporary threads and our own threads.
Part of this eclectic tapestry we’re weaving is a concept called covenanting. We talk about covenanting a lot, maybe too much. But it’s an important part of who we are, even when we don’t define or describe it very well. I realized the other day that sometimes when we talk about covenanting it sounds a little like the old pledge drives some churches still do. “Pledge drive” is a bad idea in general, but it’s an especially bad start for our theology of covenanting.
The word “covenant” has a lot of meanings and implications, but basically it’s a promise based in a relationship. In that way, it’s different from a contract, which can be between complete strangers and can be wiggled out of. Covenants, in this context, are a commitment to desires, dreams, goals, and promptings for the coming year the Spirit gives our little body. We set our lists after much prayer.
The purpose of covenanting is two-fold. First, corporately we want to be following Jesus more closely. We ask ourselves, “What is the Spirit of Jesus calling us to this year? What ministries? What practices? What commitments?” Second, we want to be a body of disciples, so individually we ask, “What is God working on in me now? What does he seem to want to work on in me this year?”
By doing this covenanting process, we hope to attain what some Christian writers, ancient and modern, have called “attentiveness”. Spirituality is a matter of paying attention, and if we don’t know what we’re looking at, we probably won’t see it.
I ask my church to spend time praying through a month about the following areas. All of them are posed in “I” language, but the hope is that we can move ahead as a body of Christ followers.
1) What ministries is God leading this church into? What part do I have to play in it? Should I lead, help, or just stay out of the way?
2) What spiritual practices should I pursue in the coming year? Weekly worship, holy reading of the scriptures, daily prayer, fasting at set times, silent retreats, small group participation, a one on one relation of spiritual direction?
3) How is the Spirit leading me to give financially to the ministry of my church (let me encourage you here to think in terms of percentage giving – 5%, 8% 10%)? What about other ministries? How will I obey that leading?
4) What ministries outside the church am I called to? Is my job a place for ministry? Are my volunteer activities? How will I approach family relationships this year (spouse, parents, children, siblings, etc.)?
5) Who are the people in my world with whom I can more intentionally share the good news of Jesus?
6) How can I more intentionally pursue justice in the world? How can I be more intentionally compassionate?
After that month we write our covenants and commit ourselves to share them with another person who will covenant to keep us accountable to our intentions. Our treasurers receive our monetary covenants, and I give a loose oversight to the other areas of commitment.
The only way to accomplish this process is to begin with prayer, move in prayer, and finish in prayer. The covenant becomes a prayer.
Covenanting shouldn’t be intimidating. If it is, it’s become only for the Really Spiritual. Obviously, the more honestly one can answer the questions above, the better a covenant will be, but no one has to be a Super Christian in each area. A covenant can be as simple as one line: “I’ll worship this year with you when it’s convenient.” Or, “I’ll attend a small group when I can.” Or, it can take the form of a commitment to daily prayer, preparing a piece for our worship gatherings, small group participation, weekly worship, and eight percent of one’s income to the work of the Church.