Emergence

On Sunday we laid out our Provisional Covenant Membership process at Emergence. If you missed the sermon Sunday, we talked about what it means to covenant and identify with a local church. A couple of the highlights from Sunday:

• It is God's design to use the local church to proclaim the gospel, and display the realities of the coming Kingdom to the world. (Mt 16)
• Local churches are lead by Godly elders and Christians who identify with that local church. (Heb 13)
• The local church, proclaims God's wisdom to the world and the cosmos (Eph 3:10)

What Covenant membership is all about is as Christians in a local church, we are committed towards both identifying with that local church, and striving towards biblical obedience for the Christian. Covenant members agree to:

• The Gospel is man's only hope for Salvation
• Agreement with the doctrinal statement of Emergence
• A Covenant relationship to push towards biblical obedience

The most important thing to understand about entering covenant, is by doing so you are choosing to identify with this local church. As a local church we are committed to walking with our covenant members, loving, encouraging and spurring one another on towards love and good deeds.

We realize as imperfect people, we will have seasons where we will struggle to attain to the commitments of the covenant... in those moments our hope as a church is not to judge, condemn, or be legalistic... but rather to support, and encourage the body to continue to pursue a God who loves his children with an unsearchable love.

The most exciting thing about covenant membership is that it is, an opportunity to move your faith and walk with Jesus into a family, that wants to love and serve you and with you... to impact North Jersey for the fame of Jesus.

If you weren't in Sunday's gatherings to receive the covenant, or if you need an additional copy, you may download one here.

The window for membership is open until October 30th. You may turn your completed covenant in the box in the back of the room at Emergence through that date. Following that date, no more members will be received until the fall of 2012.

We hope that you'll consider joining as a founding member in order to place yourself into an accountable relationship with those at Emergence and formally identify yourself as someone in pursuit of Jesus with this community.