Sermon was not recorded this week but transcript is available at the link below. Go to bottom of this introduction for link to the pdf file.

COVENANT SUNDAY

Today is Covenant Sunday at Cap. We are going to ask you to freely and voluntarily participate in making covenant with us. Our Capchurch covenant is value laden. The values behind the covenant express our common experience of being called by God; the content of our faith—what we believe about the triune God from the Bible; who we are as a community; our sense of purpose, mission; And our unique history with God.

Behind our covenant are other values—values that define who we are as a community of faith and how we will treat one another; values that the shape and character of church life. All of our ministries and programs; and our pastoral posture when we meet with you for coffee arise out of these values. By affirming these values we as leaders are writing Cap’s history in advance. Covenant is the highest form of relational commitment. It writes the future in advance by choosing to do good to someone despite what may come. When you define your relationships by covenant, they are defined by commitment, love, and acceptance and not by performance. Let’s make covenant!

Find the written transcript of the sermon
here

All families have rules. All relationship systems have rules. Rules are made to contain anxiety. When anxiety hits a family and they feel out of control, imposing a rule restores some sense of order or control. This is o.k. if the rules are what are called “humane rules”. Most of these rules relate to how feelings are handled in the family. Children will conform to a rule, believe it, and adapt it as part of reality in order to avoid the experience of anxiety. Inhumane rules encourage a child to be dishonest with others to avoid punishment and dishonest with oneself to avoid guilt. Humane rules promote self-worth; accept each person as human, possessed of feelings, well-meaning & sometimes fallible.

Churches, like families, are relational systems with lots of anxiety and can impose covert rules which translate into unhealthy ways of relating to each other and to God. It would be really interesting for a lunch discussion today to discuss what you perceive as Cap’s un-verbalized ethos [rules]. If you walk in as a newcomer this Fall and sit through a month of services, what’s the deal here? What are the un-verbalized expectations? Today with Called: The First of Cap’s Three C’s, we begin to make what may be covert to you, overt.

(Mike Nichols)

Download the PDF