Skip to main content

Covenant Service with Grove Green


Every year Methodists are encouraged to take part in the Methodist Covenant Service. Methodists all over the commonwealth will be taking part in the same service and praying the same prayer that we will pray shortly. And the amazing thing is that we have been praying that prayer since 1755 when John Wesley shared it with 1500 people in the French Church at Spitalfields London.

Wesley was a magpie. He collected things from every group of Christians he came into contact with and the Covenant service is no different. He borrowed it from the Puritans and The Moravians. Both of these groups had huge impacts on the lives of John and Charles Wesley and it was with the Moravians that John had his heart strangely warmed. You might think this is all really nice but what does this mean for me? Well for me the importance of the Covenant Service is twofold:

1)    It shows the link to a tradition that we as Methodists have shared since Methodism began and for me this is important as a Methodist. We can sometimes be very quick to throw away our tradition in an attempt to somehow be contemporary or relevant. This service roots us in our tradition. It reminds us that we are not alone when there are times that it feels like we are the only Christians in the world.

2)    The Covenant Service reminds me that our calling as Christians is not to the Church but to love and serve God. It doesn’t matter how we worship or what denomination we belong to are calling is not to the Church but to God. We are called to his light and his salt to our communities and our families.

Jesus didn’t promise that being his disciples would be easy. And the important word there is disciple. A disciple is someone who follows a teacher. Out teacher just happens to be the Creator of the universe. And he will ask us to do some things that will be uncomfortable and difficult but we follow him because he holds the keys to life and life eternal.

The Covenant Service needs to come with a health warning however. When we say this prayer we are making a vow before God. We are entering into a covenant and it is something that God will take very seriously. If you do not feel that you can make the promises then please do not feel that you have to.

When we go through the Covenant prayer I would you to focus on two things:
1)    This school, and
2)    This community

I recently read a book called Small Church Big Impact. It was how small Churches are the backbone of the church universal. It is the small church that is meeting the needs of their community because they are part of the community. We are that small church in a community. We should unashamedly be that link between this Church and our community. The majority of us live in this community and so our focus needs to be this community.

So as we recommit ourselves to serving God let us recommit ourselves to our community.


Amen 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ecclesiastes 3:1 There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven   Thought for the day The blogger Jill Printzenhoff writes about a time how she went fishing and caught nothing and yet the fisherman next to her managed to pull out seven. They were using different bait and she describes it as not her day. She finishes her blog post with these words: ‘You keep striving, you keep working, and you keep on keeping on. Because some day when you cast your line . . . you will be at the right spot at the right time . . . and that day will be your day . . . the day you catch that all elusive fish!’ I believe that there is a time for everything under heaven and earth and sometimes, well actually, all the time we need to be patient and wait because the reality of the situation is we are working to God’s time. The writer of Ecclesiastes also says this about God’s timing: ‘He has made everything appropriate[b] in its time. He has also put eternity in...
Post a Comment
Read more
 Holiness What does holiness look like to you? Or when you hear the word holy what comes to mind. The reason I’m asking is because for a while now I have been thinking about holiness. What does it mean to be holy and whether or not we can truly be holy? We are commanded to be holy both in the Old Testament and by Jesus who said be holy as your Father in heaven is holy (Matthew 5:48).  John Wesley taught that genuine faith produces inward and outward holiness. He consistently argued that salvation must produce holiness of heart and life, but he never viewed the process as something that would be completed. He taught that despite the inner assurance and regeneration of character that results from knowing that you have been saved, it is never too long before we discover that there is still a root of sin within. However, there is never an occasion or state of true Christian discipleship that does not lead to a deepening of our love for God and for our neighbour and we become mo...
Post a Comment
Read more

What does it mean to put Jesus first?

What does it mean to put Jesus first? John 12:1-8   Philippians 3:4b-13 What does it mean to put Jesus first? I ask this because as always I try to find a link between the two lectionary readings and as I was thinking about the readings the thing that I recognized across both these passages was the thought that both Mary and Paul are putting Jesus first. In John, we have this wonderful account of Mary anointing Jesus. It’s a passage we think we know reasonably well. It’s not the only account of Jesus being anointed, and most Biblical scholars agree that this account is the same as the accounts found in Luke and Matthew. Details vary but essentially it is the same account. In the account we see Jesus reclining at a table and then Mary prostrates herself at Jesus’ feet and empty’s a whole jar of nard on Jesus. And then wipes Jesus feet with her hair. Two things strike me here. Firstly Nard was not cheap. John notes that is was the equivalent of a year’s worth of wag...
7 comments
Read more