Covenanting Community
Though the GOCN uses the term “congregational mission” to capture the thoughts about missional living that will follow, the term was not used here to avoid defining missional living with the word mission. Instead, the broad themes of how the church lives out the missio dei were condensed into two words: covenanting community. Covenant community is the term used by Roxburgh (1998) to describe the commitment to the practices of the way of God in the Christian community. The suffix -ing has been added to covenant to reveal the ongoing process of commitment and reformation in which the community is continuously engaged. Within missional thinking, the covenant community is ascribed four characteristics. It is shaped by an alternative story, relates to the whole of life, adopts an incarnational, servant approach, and is structured for mission.
Contrast Community – Shaped by an Alternative Story
If it is true that the loudest criticism levied against the church by missional voices is that the church has become shaped by cultural values and narratives, it is also true that the loudest plea for change in the church is for the church to be shaped by an alternative story (see Barrett, 1998; Edson, 2007; Roxburgh & Boren, 2009). Instead of being shaped by culture, the church of God is to be shaped by the biblical narrative. The biblical narrative begins to shape the covenanting community when the community “relives it as memory in ritual and repetition” (Roxburgh and Boren, 2009, p. 61). This shaping is defined as a “lifestyle of continual conversion as [the church] hears and responds to the gospel over and over again” (Hunsberger, 1998, p. 86).
As the worldview of the covenanting community is shaped by the gospel, it will be a “powerful witness” (Barrett, 1998, p. 127) as it lives with distinctly Christian practices in an increasingly secularly dominated society. Though the distinctiveness of each Christian community differs both according to the culture and the practices of the community, the point remains that the missional church is a contrast society pointing to a different and better, God-ordered way of living in this world. Each community must discern how God is asking them to live differently in context. Barrett, (1998) captures the theme of the literature, saying “to discern the points of dissent, is to be a missional church” (p. 127).
Communitas – Relating to the Whole of Life
As the covenanting community continuously lives in and with but also against culture, it will find itself pushed to the margins of society, no longer fitting in with the dominant trends of secularism. The experiences of ambiguity, uncertainty, and discomfort of marginality are defined by missional writers as liminality (Frost, 2006; Hirsch, 2006; Roxburgh, 2006). As the community endures liminality together, it becomes more than community, taking on the nature of communitas, a Latin term of equality employed by anthropologist Victor Turner and defined by Hirsch (2006) as “a common experience of ordeal, humbling, transition, and marginalization” (p. 221). The covenanting community becomes communitas as it bound together in the struggle to remain shaped by the biblical narrative in a society that pulls toward a different lifestyle.
Irrevocably bound together by the common struggle, the communitas surpasses the fake and shallow communities commonly seen in the world and often in the culturally trapped church. Core characteristics of the covenanting community living as communitas include self-giving, inclusion, preparation of all people for a diversity of ministry, and being a “communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders” (Edson, 2007, p. 30). The communitas will “cultivate space for people to unlearn old patterns and learn new ways of living” (Dietterich, 1998, p. 152). Therefore, communitas relates to the whole of life as it creates the space for and shapes the entire individual and the entire community for mission. Indeed, mission becomes the very “fabric of one’s life” (Hunsberger, 1998, p. 97).
Contextual Ministry – Adopting the Incarnational, Servant Approach
Shaped by the biblical narrative in a secular world and living as communitas, the covenanting community takes a contextual approach to ministry by adopting an incarnational, servant perspective. To do contextual ministry, it is necessary to be in the context (incarnational) and to discern how to partner with God to redeem the context to his purposes (servant). When it truly understands its missional nature in the roots of Trinitarian theology, the covenanting community becomes a “contagious and overflowing” community of love (Dietterich, 1998, p. 149). As the community walks with and is led by the Spirit, it naturally produces the fruits of the Spirit, becoming a “new apologetic” in a suspicious culture (Dietterich, 1998; Edson, 2007). As a new apologetic, the community remains true to the biblical pattern of God forming a unique people whose existence clashed with and transformed the dominant institutions of their day (Roxburgh, 2006).
To be the new apologetic in the changing culture, covenanting communities “live out their identity as Christian community in close relationship to their contexts without succumbing to the context or . . . denying the context on the basis of their identity, history or tradition” (Fredrickson, 2007, p. 46). Walking the fine balance between living in and being shaped by culture requires great discernment from the covenanting community. Discernment as a necessary tool for missional living is an incredibly common theme in the literature. At its most basic, missional discernment simply asks three questions: What is God doing? What does God want to do? How can we cooperate? (Turnipseed, 1998; Van Gelder, 2007b). These three questions give the community a “missionary vision” (Mouw, 1999, p. 13), but force the church to be flexible, patient, and open to ambiguity as it puts in the effort to allow God to bring clarity to his work in and will for the culture (Turnipseed, 1998; Van Gelder, 2007b).
Intentional Organization – Structure for Mission
The final step for the covenanting community is to intentionally organize itself to fulfill its mission, or to more accurately reflect the literature, to express its identity as a missional community.
Guder (1998) is one of the leading voices calling for missional structures. Citing the fact that form follows function, he states the structure of the church must incarnate the message and mission of God into society. Bullock (2008) picks up on this theme as well, claiming that the missio dei requires the church to take on structures and forms that engage the world. Further, Bullock writes, “How the church is organized is directly linked to its identity and purpose” (p. 105). Not wanting the reader to miss his point or fail to understand, Van Gelder (2007b) spells the form-follows-mission nature of the church with three propositions—“The church is. The church does what it is. The church organizes what it does” (p. 17).
Though the claim to structure for mission is prevalent in the literature, there is a lack of complete clarity as to what such a structure looks like or how a community is to move toward it. This lack of clarity is likely caused by the belief that structures will differ in among local contexts. Like reading a sign in the fog, the careful reader can find a two repeated characteristics that ought to define the covenanting community’s structure: catholicity, and exponential reproducibility. Catholicity, the more prevalent of the two characteristics, refers to the universal and united Church. However the church might choose to structure itself, the structure ought to be a part of and point toward the bigger whole of God’s church throughout the world (Guder, 1998; Turnipseed, 1998).
Exponential reproducibility is not a term common to the missional literature, though it is referenced by Cole (2005, 2008) as key to the structure of the church. Gibbs (2006) also uses the term, labeling missional and emerging churches as “reproducible on an exponential scale” (xiii). The covenanting community, though prepared to change and even cease to exist in a specific form if God so wills, relentlessly seeks to multiply the mission of God throughout the world. It is important to note the covenanting community focuses on expanding the mission of God, not a particular church form or structure.
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