Covenant Communities

Creating community in a church is a much greater challenge than running programs, and most of the problems we face in the church are the result of broken relationships and lack of community.

As we see a new type of church leader emerging; authentic community will become one of the primary standards by which church health will be measured, rather than church size or the number of quality of specific ministry programs.
So the question quickly comes up, "what is authentic community?"
Someone best described it as "real people, in real relationships being real, all the time."
I simply call it, entering into covenant.

Rick Warren has said there are four levels of relationships that people engage into.
The first and most shallowest is Studying together, then
Sharing together, then
Serving together and finally
Suffering together.

This type of community is difficult, messy and sometimes impossible. But it starts with a willingness to engage in time frames that don't fall into the normal "meeting time."

Those that are living at a deeper level of community constantly find themselves with each other in homes, coffee shops or anywhere on almost a daily basis; it's deeper than a "Tweet" or "Facebook" wall post.

Are you engaging into authentic relationships and creating covenant communities?

Am I?