COVENANT @ NORTHMINSTER BAPTIST CHURCH

NORTHMINSTER BAPTIST CHURCH COVENANT

Believing that it is in response to the call of Jesus Christ that we have given ourselves to Him as the Lord and Savior of our lives, we publicly acknowledge Him as the Head of the Church and as the true pattern for life and all of life’s relationships.

So it is now that we covenant with Him and with one another to live together in love as He has commanded, to feel and to demonstrate genuine concern for one another, to exercise a watchcare over each other as He does with all of us.

Understanding that it is a shared life to which we have been called, and knowing that to live involves happiness and disappointment, success and failure, fulfillment and emptiness, pleasure and suffering, we covenant to share the joys and the sorrows, to bear together the burdens, to pray sensitively for one another, to affirm in the spirit of Christ that we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper.

Believing that the gathered community is of great meaning, we commit ourselves to participation in the regular assemblies of the church, in its ministries of worship, instruction, and service.  We intend by the corporate sharing of our lives with God through His Son to build a witness of faith, love, understanding and strength that shall be an eloquent testimony of His presence in the world.

Realizing that it was to the world of human need that our Lord came, that it was for the world of people that he gave Himself and that it is in the world that we find ourselves called to be His servants, we dedicate our lives to ministering in the world, ever alert to the voice of human need wherever the cry may be heard.

Aware that as bearers of His name we personally embrace His Lordship, we shall strive in all of our ways and relationships, in our families, the church, and the wider community, to honor and serve Him.  We believe in the autonomy of the local church, the soul competency of the individual, the priesthood of all believers, the authority of the scriptures, religious liberty, and the practice of believer’s baptism.  Committed to serving, we gladly enter into relationships for mission and ministry with other Baptist churches that share these beliefs and into the larger fellowship of the Christian community as we seek cooperatively to serve Christ in our world.

Sharing a personal commitment to Jesus Christ and a deep concern for the world, and bound by the bonds of love and understanding, we seek to allow the church to be instrumental in accomplishing God’s purpose in the world.