These are the central questions of Covenant!, an adult formation program scheduled to launch in 2008.
The Scriptural warrant for Covenant! comes from the Letter to the Ephesians 4:1—16
Covenant! takes place entirely in small groups of people who have completed Connect? and Commit?, and who are looking to continue and deepen the intimate community and spiritual growth they’ve found. In Covenant! groups meet together for a minimum of six months to help you to strengthen a sense of God’s particular call and to consider how you might develop a rhythm of life in response to that call, a rhythm that energizes, empowers, and nourishes the whole person. You will look at ancient and contemporary examples of a monastic “rule of life”—a term ancient monastic communities used to name a rhythm of life that brought them closer to God and to one another in community, and helped them continue with intentionality in the practices that nourished them and their faith. You will grow in maturity, measured by the full stature of Christ!I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift…. to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ…. speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promoted the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
