Untitled Sermon (2)

As we begin this afternoon, I pray you got a bit from Greg this morning on reaching out into the community and I bring you greetings from Bonnie. Unfortunately, because of a family medical issue, she is not with us physically this afternoon but sends her love and admiration for all of us here and she also would really like it if I said, “Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for your love and support during this time of transition for her and Steve but also for all of your generous support of the Conference and the work that we have been doing as a Conference in Covenant with one another.”

I also want to express my gratitude to you for your attention and willingness to participate in this day. I have often found days like today and this time, in particular, to be valuable to my ministry and my growing faith. So, let’s begin this afternoon with a brief prayer and then I promise not to get too long-winded on our topic this afternoon so that you have time for your small group discussion and fellowship before we wrap up our day. Would you join me in prayer…Gracious and Loving God, here we are, you faithful, called servants coming before you this day for enrichment, understanding, and fellowship. In this time, o God, we ask that you would enlighten our spirits, open our hearts, our minds, and our ears to your voice amid all that we have going on each day. We pray for those who are ill or in need of your loving touch in their lives. We pray for the church that it may always be open to your voice and your call in this world. And we pray for our world, which seems to be falling further and further away from you. Bless us, teach us, and guides us in all that we say and do, Amen.

I have to be honest that being with you this afternoon is both humbling and a bit scary. I mean, here I am, a young guy, relatively new in ministry, standing before you to talk about covenant. You all could probably teach me so much about what it means to be in ministry, but to be perfectly honest, as an authorized minister in the UCC, there a few concepts about our polity as a denomination that cause so much contention and misunderstanding. One of those is the idea of living into the covenants that we make all while maintaining our appropriate boundaries and not abusing the idea of autonomy. So while we might think that covenant is a concept that does not bear much on our ministries at this point, it is a topic that should be considered because the idea of autonomy as compared to covenant causes much distress in our churches. Would you agree with me on that? Here’s what I have seen in the churches I have served as well as the churches I have worked with in my position as Search and Call Associate…covenant is what we strive to live into but when it comes down to it, we hold autonomy to be a greater emphasis on how we do things in the church…and this is what makes these two ideas such a sticky wicket in my mind.

I want to start us off this afternoon with a little bit of a back and forth conversation as I find I learn much more if I am engaged in the conversation rather than just listening to someone drone on for minutes on end…Let me ask you then, how do you define covenant? (allow a few moments for folks to respond) Now, let me offer to you the official definition…according to Merriam Webster, a covenant is an agreement or making an agreement between parties. While this is a definition, it does not really explain what, how, or why we makes covenants within the church.

There is a Biblical basis for the term covenant, as we all know. How many covenants can you think of from Biblical stories? Go ahead and shout a few out now…

These are all examples of what it means to be in covenant, however I believe there is a deeper meaning to the term covenant and really it is about one thing and one thing only, that being relationship and how we manage our relationships to one another and to those around us in our communities, and going even beyond that, it is about our relationship to those in the world. For me, covenant has become the basis for all of my relationships. I mean, think about it, I am sure all of us have made promises and have broken them, and if we are really honest, we will admit that we have. Covenant needs to be something that we think about in a much deeper sense that just a mere agreement or promise. So for the next 20 minutes or so, I am going to try to explain, to the best of my knowledge, what it means for us to be in covenant because I truly believe we need to be considering this concept at a much deeper level between ourselves as well as the congregations we serve.

For starters, let’s look at how we view covenant and the covenantal relationships we have in the UCC…

I don’t want to give an entire polity course here because I am certainly no expert in this field but do have some experience in what it means to be a covenantal partner with those I serve beside as well as holding others accountable to the covenant promises they have made. When you think of the structure of the UCC, we are historically governed by our covenants. So if we want to look at this graphically, it would look something like this…

If you look at this graphic, the center circle represents our local congregations. At the heart of our relationships in the church is the people who make up each congregation. In fact, when we began as a denomination, the folks who came together to decide how we would operate, after much deliberation, our founders decided that the best way for us to operate would be in covenant with one another. Here’s what our history records…because of the vast differences in governance models between the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Churches, a balance needed to be found and instituted. The first UCC Constitution affirmed autonomy for local churches while also calling upon all the settings of the Church--the local church, the associations, the conferences, and the General Synod--to listen to one another and to respect each other’s actions and give them thoughtful and prayerful response. This is how we developed the structure you see before you.

After the heart of the structure, number 2 is our Conferences and Associations. Notice that it is a just slightly larger circle or oval really. The basis for our relationship with one another lies at the Church level, however each church much live in covenant with its respective Conference or Association. Our Constitution, updated in 2000, defines these relationships in this way…“Within the United Church of Christ, the various expressions of the church relate to each other in a covenantal manner. Each expression of the church has responsibilities and rights in relation to the others, to the end that the whole church will seek God’s will and be faithful to God’s mission. Decisions are made in consultation and collaboration among the various parts of the structure. As members of the Body of Christ, each expression of the church is called to honor and respect the work and ministry of each other part. Each expression of the church listens, hears, and carefully considers the advice, counsel, and requests of others. In this covenant, the various expressions of the United Church of Christ seek to walk together in all God’s ways” All this really means is that we are in relationship to one another through every level of our polity or governance.

The next level, the green oval, represents our National Setting and General Synod. While we do not necessarily need to do everything that General Synod sends out as pronouncements, we do need to live in relationship with the greater community of our denomination. What I just read a moment ago relates not only to the extent that churches are in covenant with their respective Conference or Association but also at the greater level of the national setting as well. What this means is that when we, as ministers, take our vows of ordination or accept a call to be licensed, we are essentially saying that we are going to live into all relationships that come with that and that means, local, regional, national, and world.

Speaking of the world community, the last circle represents our world partners and sibling organizations. Our relationships extend beyond just the four walls of our churches and into the world. May I offer a Biblical reasoning for this, or are you all familiar with the great commission? Since we are all authorized ministers here, I am sure we know the story oh so well. Frankly, we are called to serve and our service is not just to those in the family of faith. Our agreement to hold the UCC in highest regard as authorized ministers means that we need to live out our covenants at all levels and make decisions in concert with the beliefs of the church we serve.

That, essentially, is what our covenantal relationships involve and the what and why we do things the way we do. With that being said, I also must give us a few moments to consider the idea of autonomy, which the “how” of what we do…

As we look at this word this afternoon, I want us to consider what it truly means to be autonomous in our covenantal relationships…

So Merriam Webster defines autonomy in three ways…read from slide…Ok, so that’s what Merriam Webster says but what does it mean to us in the UCC? Here’s the thing, I think that we hang onto this term a little too tightly in our local congregations. Part of why I started with covenant this afternoon is this idea of living into the relationships that exist within our governance structure. It is extremely important for us to remember the relationships we are called to uphold and maintain much more so than the idea of autonomy. We have used this terminology to describe our polity a little too often, I think. But the reality is that when we hang our hats on our autonomous structure, we often put very little emphasis on the covenantal relationships that we have as well, it is almost as if this gives us the excuse to ignore essential relationships and circle our wagons so to speak and isolate ourselves from others.

Donald Freeman wrote a wonderful essay on this idea and I invite you all to look for it on the UCC website and read it sometime. I am not going to reiterate much of what he said but do want to say this…in regard to autonomy, it is definitely how we make decisions but not how we discern God’s call to us to move into the world to do the work that Christ started in his years on this Earth.

As we move into greater relationships in our communities and beyond, autonomy is important for the churches as it helps us to define who we are on a cellular level, but it should not be an excuse to build up walls. Christ taught us to reach out to the least of these and that meant getting to know others and building relationship.

I pray at this point that you have not drifted off to sleep or checked out or gotten sick of hearing the word relationship. Honestly though, the heart of our polity is truly building relationship. It is only through our relationships that we receive information from the national setting. It is only through our relationship with the Conferences within which we serve, that we can get to know one another and work together to make the Great Commission a reality. And finally at the local level, we make decisions based upon this flow of information but also from God speaking to and through the individuals we serve alongside, which again is all due to the relationships that we build. It is these relationships that make our system work.

When we think about who we are at the heart of our denomination, the relationship between the triune God in our Statement of Faith, helps us to also identify the relationships that need to exist in order to do the work that God calls us into, so that we do not build walls but rather open the doors of our churches to explore and become what God has in store for us.

As we begin thinking and preparing to have discussions in our groups about covenant and relationships, I want you to keep the Statement of Faith in front of you. So, let’s spend some time building relationships…