When I left my last church to return to graduate school, I had to say goodbye to more than my congregation. I also had to say good-bye to my
Covenant Discipleship Group!
That was not an easy thing to do. We were only together for a little over two years, but the guys in that group went through a lot together. We had also reached that
critical point in the life of a CD Group when true accountability was starting to happen. And that is a rare and precious thing in the church today.
My first year as a doctoral student at Duke Divinity School was wonderful in many ways. In my studies, I delved more deeply than I ever had into our Wesleyan tradition. And I found an accountability partner. We met weekly for prayer and conversation about important issues in our lives. But I did not find a CD Group.
That changed this fall, when a number of people who had
experienced small group accountability in the past came together in the hopes of starting a new Covenant Discipleship Group. We ended up with two – a group of five men and a group of five women. With ministry on the horizon, these seminarians realized the need to go deeper into their own discipleship as they prepare to lead
congregations toward doing the same. Mr. Wesley would be proud.
But a funny thing happened as the other four men and I began to write our covenant. We agreed on many of the acts of devotion, worship, compassion, and justice that we wanted to focus upon. But in other areas, single individuals brought up issues that the rest of the group was not really thinking about.
One guy mentioned fasting. Another wanted us to pray about the daily headlines in the newspaper. And things only got more complicated from there. One wanted to make sure we focused on measurable acts of compassion with the poor each week. Another insisted that we record our prayer concerns in a journal.
We had a dilemma on our hands. How could we reconcile such different desires for our covenant?
One option would have been to water everything down and make our covenant clauses as vague as possible. Then each member of the CD Group could interpret them as he saw fit.
But the other option – the one we decided to follow – was for all the members to accept clauses from each individual. And by each of us submitting to another’s idea of disciplined spiritual practice, we realized that we can all learn something about the real character of discipleship. It’s not just about “me” and “my desires” for the covenant.
It is, rather, about learning to grow in faith together under a common rule. And though it might not be my idea to fast or to keep a prayer journal, I am also opening myself up to the possibility that God will transform me through those very practices.
Rev. Andrew Thompson is a doctoral student at Duke University Divinity School in Durham, NC. You can read his blog at http://www.genxrising.com/.
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