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Christian

I know that it might seem high-falutin of us to say and emphasize that we are quite self consciously a "Christian" church. But it is important to make this point for two reasons. First, religious groups of many different kinds now use the word "church" to refer to themselves or their gatherings. That is a perfectly fine thing for them to do. Christians do not have a monopoly on the English word "church." If you the reader are part of such a religious but not a Christian group that uses the word "church," we just don’t want you to be confused or upset by our use of the same word "church."

Likewise, there are many professing Christian people who think of "Christianity" and "church" in the same breath, but who also have discovered upon looking around that not all groups that use the word "church" necessarily claim to be or desire to be thought of as "Christian" in any historic sense of the word. So, to avoid confusion, we just come out and say that we are, or are trying to be, a Christian church.

I wish that this were all I needed to say to identify our fellowship, but unfortunately things get even murkier. For there is in fact a wide array of different religious groups who do claim for themselves the name Christian, and for their group the name "Christian church," but who differ from one another in the most profound and radical ways regarding what the word "Christian" means. It has gotten to the point where the word almost doesn’t mean anything objective at all! So it doesn’t help much for us to say we are a Christian church. Is there any criteria which can guide us in our use of the word "Christian?"

Well, since the word "Christian" contains the word "Christ," can we not fairly say that a Christian church would consist of those who would in some way seek to follow, or be like, or worship, Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the Christ, or the Messiah of Israel?

Sadly, there is such a huge variation of thought current in various Christian circles about who this Jesus was, and who (and whether) he is, that even this description is less universally helpful than one would wish. There are for example many who no longer believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, in his deity, in the virgin birth, in the sacrificial atoning purpose of his death. They would say that many if not all of these ideas were inventions of the early church for various and sundry (and sometimes dark and sinister) reasons and motives. To get to the real Jesus we have to get behind all of that nonsense, peel back all the fanciful parts of the four gospels, and there and then discover the real and pristine Jesus. Then, whatever this Jesus we have uncovered looks like, we will go with that, and thereafter use the word Christian to refer properly to being a follower of this particular Jesus.

So what about us? Where do we stand in all of this? At Covenant Fellowship we believe, and make the case elsewhere in this Web site, that the gospels are in fact reliable statements regarding the person and mission of the real Jesus. We also believe that the classic and historic early church formulations were and are good and accurate reflections of what was and is true about Jesus. Thus we affirm, along with our friends in the Orthodox and Catholic churches, the historic creeds – the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed - as statements which accurately reflect truth about the resurrected and living Jesus Christ.

This commitment to the historic creeds, which in our minds is tantamount to a commitment to the truth of the historic and biblical Jesus, is a central part of what we mean when we say we are a Christian church. But obviously being and living as a Christian is more than simply believing something to be true about Jesus Christ. As a community of believers we seek not just to affirm statements as true, but to know, worship, honor, follow, love, and obey the God who has revealed Himself to mankind through Jesus of Nazareth. We seek to live out together that which we have been called to do and be as followers of Jesus. We desire together to undertake a ministry of self sacrificial love to one another and to the greater community around us. Thus we desire that it be said of us, not just that we believe so and so to be true, but that "surely God is in their midst."