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