http://www.covlife.org/static/meeting_notes
It's not easy to evaluate areas where we've made mistakes, but God has been helping the pastors of Covenant Life through the constructive feedback of members to identify areas where we've gotten things wrong and where we need to grow. At our Members Meeting Sunday night Josh shared the following message on behalf of the pastors. We're posting it here—both an audio version along with a full transcript—for the benefit of those who couldn't attend as well as former members. We hope you'll be encouraged as you see God's faithfulness to refine us and grow us.
May 22, 2011 | Joshua Harris
Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for making this gathering a priority. If this is your first Members Meeting, we are so happy to have you with us. For those of you who have been to many of these, let me say at the outset that the format of tonight’s meeting is going to be different than past times. Normally we share a number of different announcements and updates, but tonight I’m going to share some important things God has been showing the pastors about where we’ve gotten things wrong and where we believe we need to grow as leaders and as a church.At the last members meeting I told you that we’d been receiving feedback from members about changes they’d seen in the church that hadn’t been fully explained. This led to the decision to hold several meetings at my house to hear the concerns and questions of members.
I am so grateful for the men and women of this church who have sat down with me and other pastors to help us evaluate our leadership. We had three meetings at my house this winter with nearly 80 people total, and we’ve also met with different individuals and couples one-on-one. People have shared honestly and courageously and also lovingly. I’ve experienced first-hand the truth of Proverbs 27:6 that says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” God has used these honest conversations to help us.
It’s so important to me and all the pastors that this open dialogue continues. This can’t be a limited season; it must be an ongoing way of life at Covenant Life. It’s essential for the health of our church that you know you can talk to your pastors and share questions and concerns at any time. For many of you, coming to us with questions or concerns has been your consistent practice. And for years our Care Group leaders have helped to facilitate an awareness among the pastors of the needs, strengths, and weaknesses they or other members have perceived. I’m grateful for the way they’ve served. But we’ve never wanted any member to hesitate to approach us. Sadly, several people have told me that they haven’t felt like they could do this. It grieves me that anyone has felt this way. We want that to change. Please don’t hesitate to bring any concern or question. Please don’t wait for an invitation or a special occasion.
One of the things that has been most encouraging about this process is that many of the points we’ve heard from members have lined up with and clarified things that God was already helping us see.
I share this not to imply that we already had this figured out, but to highlight what I believe is a work of the Holy Spirit. This church belongs to God. 1 Peter 5:4 tells us that Jesus is the “chief Shepherd.” And I see him shepherding us, growing us and refining us. And that’s why, even though it’s not easy to talk about our mistakes, I have a tremendous sense of faith for how God is working in our church.
So please understand that what I’m sharing tonight is not a matter of one group of people coming to the pastors with their observations. It’s something bigger than that. I believe God is answering our prayer that he would revive us and refine us. Is there anything we need more than that?
I want to read something to you from Ray Ortlund’s book When God Comes to Church. This is a book on revival, and this particular quote has both challenged me and stirred my faith greatly over the past eight months...
Commenting on Isaiah 64:1 (“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down...”), Ray Ortlund writes:
When God rends the heavens and comes down on his people, a divine power achieves what human effort at its best fails to do. God's people thirst for the ministry of the Word and receive it with tender meltings of soul ... Reconciliation between believers is sought and granted. Spiritual things, rather than material things, capture people's hearts. A defensive, timid church is transformed into a confident army. Believers joyfully suffer for their Lord. They treasure usefulness to God over career advancement. Communion with God is avidly enjoyed. Churches and Christian organizations reform their policies and procedures. People who had always been indifferent to the gospel now inquire anxiously. And this type of spiritual movement draws in not just the isolated straggler here and there but large numbers of people. A wave of divine grace washes over the church and spills out into the world. That is what happens when God comes down. And that is how we should pray for the church today.I’ve seen a desire for reconciliation, a willingness for self-evaluation, and a quickness to own mistakes; I believe all of these things reflect the work of the Spirit. And I see the Lord working to reform our church and grow us in ways that are needed.
As we learned in our study of Nehemiah, God is at work when his people rise up with faith to rebuild the walls.
When we started the Nehemiah series, I had no idea how much that study would challenge me personally and mirror what I believe God is doing in Covenant Life. Just like
Nehemiah and the people of Israel, I believe God has led us into a time of honest evaluation of the condition of the walls of our church.
Friends, by God’s grace, we have a strong, healthy, influential and growing church. There is so much to celebrate. I thank God that we love his Word and are seeking to center our lives on the gospel. I thank God that in so many ways we are united. I thank God that there is a real commitment to pursue holiness. I thank God for the depth of relationships and fellowship that we enjoy. I thank God that we’re pushing forward in gospel mission in our local community, and in partnership with Sovereign Grace, around the world. God has been so good to us. And we would dishonor him if we didn’t recognize that and give him all the glory! I’m so grateful for all the service, leadership and sacrifice that have brought us to this point.
But gratefulness for grace doesn’t mean we overlook areas of weakness. The Holy Spirit has also been helping us see places where the walls need repair. This shouldn’t surprise us or overly discourage us. We’re not in heaven yet. Covenant Life isn’t the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God! We’re flawed, sinful people whom God is changing. So we don’t need to be shocked when we realize that there are still places where God wants to apply grace to grow and transform us. There are areas we need to strengthen. There are places where we need to acknowledge we’ve gotten things wrong. I don’t think this process is negative or counter-productive. It’s certainly not an indictment of our rich history. It’s simply an acknowledgment of our ongoing need for gospel transformation and renewal. And I believe it is a vital part of ongoing growth and ongoing integrity for any local church.
This won’t be the last time we have to do this. I assure you this won’t be the last time we get things wrong. In future days, by God’s grace, we’ll no doubt see areas of our church that need realignment and refinement, and we’ll need to talk about them as a church family. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s a very healthy part of life together.
So let me share several key issues that I think God has been putting his finger on. I’m going to put these under three headlines that are an attempt to summarize the issues...
1. Reducing To One Practice
For several years now C.J. Mahaney, who was one of the founding pastors of Covenant Life and now serves as president of Sovereign Grace Ministries, has been leading the pastors of Sovereign Grace to recognize the difference between principle and practice. A principle is a clear teaching or imperative from God’s Word. A practice is a specific action or decision that seeks to apply a principle.So for example, Scripture clearly teaches that husbands should love and cherish their wives (Eph. 5).
But how two Christian husbands put this same principle into practice can differ. One Christian can apply this principle by taking his wife out to dinner every Wednesday. But another husband might find time to communicate with and express affection for his wife with a walk around the neighborhood each night. They’re both honoring a biblical principle, but their practice is different.
One of the historic strengths of Covenant Life has been in putting principles into practice. We want to be, as James 1:22 says, not just hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word. May this never change! May we be a church community that takes God’s Word seriously and applies it to our lives.
Having said this, a strength in application can also be a weakness if we’re not careful. Here’s what I mean: if we elevate a single practice and invest it with the authority of biblical principle, we can place a rule or burden on people that isn’t actually commanded in God’s Word. For example, it wouldn’t be helpful if we said that the Bible teaches that couples need to go on a date every Wednesday. It’s a fine idea, but it’s not a scriptural command.
C.J. shared something with me recently that turned the light on for me. He quoted J.I. Packer who wrote that the Puritans were known for their ability to “reduce to practice”—in other words, they took biblical principles and reduced them to specific choices and decisions in their lives. This is a good thing. God’s Word, handled rightly, leads to humble and skillful application.
But C.J. pointed out that there can be a problem when we “reduce to only one practice”—and give the impression that there is only one godly way to honor a given principle.
Here are a few categories that members of the church have shared with us where they felt a single practice was over-emphasized in an unhelpful way:
- Dating and courtship
- Going away to college
- Girls and college
- Women’s Bible studies
- Women working outside the home
So for example, to honor biblical principles of purity, you had to practice courtship according to ideas in my books. Or to love the local church you shouldn’t go away to college but stay local. Or to value the leadership and teaching of the pastors, you shouldn’t attend outside Bible studies. Or to practice biblical femininity, you shouldn’t pursue higher education or work outside the home.
If you went back and listened to past messages, I don’t think you’d find us teaching, “There’s only one godly way to do this or that.” But we could have worked harder to highlight the differing viewpoints that still honored the principle.
So for example, there were occasions where we featured testimonies of people who passed up job opportunities or the chance to attend an out-of-state college for the sake of staying involved in this local church. These testimonies were designed to highlight sacrificial choices members made for the sake of participation in the church.
But we should have also featured testimonies of people who were glorifying God by excelling in their studies and in advancement in their careers even as they prioritized involvement in any other Bible-believing church. As pastors we allowed a culture to be created where the godly way was too narrowly defined.
All this is a disservice to you for several reasons. First, because it doesn’t teach you to grapple with God’s Word for yourself. We want you to study God’s Word yourself, see the biblical principles clearly, and put them into practice based on a clear conviction, not the conviction of someone else.
This is also a problem because it can lead to a legalistic environment where some people are more concerned with what other people practice than with the sufficiency of God’s Word and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Reducing to only one practice has also resulted in people feeling judged by others for not having the same practice.
One of the realizations we’re coming to as pastors is that we can do a better job in teaching the principle of Christian liberty taught in passages like Romans 14 and 1 Cor. 8-9. The principle of Christian liberty is that as followers of Christ we have freedom to make decisions about matters that are not revealed or mandated in Scripture without fear of sinning against God.
We can do a better job of teaching that one person’s or one pastor’s practice of wisdom is not God’s law and shouldn’t bind another person’s conscience.
We all need to wrestle with questions of wisdom. We all need to humbly seek to practice biblical principles and then discuss our differences with each other charitably and humbly. But we cannot as a church make everyone adopt the same practice. No matter how wise we think our practice might be, we can’t invest it with the authority of God’s Word.
We want to do a better job of teaching the principles of God’s Word and encouraging you as individuals and families to apply the Word as you see fit before the Lord. We still want to encourage each other to put God’s truth into practice. But we also want to emphasize the freedom we have as individuals and families to have different practices of the very same principle. We want to cultivate an even greater culture of grace even as we strive for holiness.
As a team of pastors we are committed to growing in this area. We’ve spoken with people who have shared where they were negatively affected by this, and we’ve asked their forgiveness.
If you’re someone who has any experience or circumstance that you’d like to talk about with us, we would love to sit down with you, listen to you, and wherever necessary ask your forgiveness as well.
2. Good Parents = Good Kids
This issue is closely tied to the issue of practice. In various ways, especially in the area of parenting, I think at times we have slid into the mistake of trusting practice more than God and his faithfulness.And the basic lie we’ve been tempted to believe is that if you get all your practice right—if you parent right, discipline right and train right—then your kids will turn out right. In other words good parents = good kids.
Well, as most of us know, this just isn’t true. And it’s unhelpful on many levels. In fact even the label “good kids” is an unhelpful one that focuses more on outward behavior and image. Even many so-called “good kids” can be struggling with unseen spiritual struggles. The reality is that, like us, all of our kids are in process and need the power of God to save them and transform them day by day.
Now I don’t think the “good parents = good kids” idea has characterized our teaching on parenting, and I don’t think every pastor or leader has made this mistake. I’m grateful for the good fruit that’s been born over the years from the biblical teaching on parenting here.
But I know that I have made this mistake and often carried this wrong mentality. And there are many negative results to this wrong thinking:
- Fear-driven parenting
- Pride and self-righteousness when our kids are doing well
- Condemnation and shame when our kids struggle or stray
- Judgment toward those whose kids are struggling
But we need to do this trusting in the Lord and recognizing that we cannot control our children’s hearts or save them. We can do our best and be faithful, and our children can still choose to sin and rebel against God.
There are some of you who have felt judged by others when your kids struggled. Instead of feeling loved you felt critiqued. I’m sorry for this. I know my leadership has contributed to this.
Over the years, a number of the pastors have faced significant parenting challenges during the teenage years. In one of those cases, I can see now that I did a poor job caring for my brother.
In an attempt to care for him, I began to focus on trying to point out what he did wrong in his parenting. I was placing my hope in a parent’s obedience rather than the sovereign grace of God to save the child. This was a lack of love for him.
When I should have been caring for this brother, I was correcting him. I’ve asked for his forgiveness for my wrongly placed hope and my poor leadership, and he has graciously forgiven me. Reviewing this with him as a pastoral team has helped us to see ways that we trusted parental faithfulness more than we relied on the gospel of grace.
But I’m sure there are others of you who to differing degrees have experienced the same thing—whether from pastors or from other members of the church. Parents in the church have shared that when their child rebelled, they felt isolated and abandoned instead of cared for and surrounded. They felt labeled as “bad parents” and marginalized in their involvement. And when their child was labeled a “bad kid,” other parents withdrew from them and sought to protect their children from them.
Many times we emphasized Proverbs 13:20—“...the companion of fools will suffer harm”—but have not adequately emphasized the truth of passages like Luke 15:4 that show that Jesus goes looking for the lost sheep.
So at many times we’ve been more focused on protecting our so-called “good kids” from the so-called “bad kids” rather than expressing God’s great love and compassion for all of our children.
We want to acknowledge that we’ve often done a poor job of caring for and pursuing young adults in this church who were struggling spiritually or wandering. We are seeking, with God’s help, to change. We want to be like our Savior who came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). We want to obey 1 Thessalonians 5:14 that tells us to “admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”
Please forgive us for any time we failed to care for and comfort you as you watched your child struggle. Forgive us for ways we failed to more actively pursue children that were wayward. We want you to know we are praying with you for them and want to hear if there are any steps we can take to reach out to them. And again, if you’d like to meet with a pastor to talk about your specific experience, please contact us. Wherever we can we’d want to talk with you personally.
In our church, the past 10 years have seen the first generation of kids come into adulthood. We’ve all learned a lot in the process. As our children have passed through their teen years, I think we have all grown in our realization that good parental training doesn’t guarantee “good” kids. It’s an incredible mercy if our teens don’t wallow in the mire ... and even if they do, that’s not the end of the story. God is mighty to save! He delights in rescuing those who have strayed! Rather than expending all our energy seeking to keep our kids from straying (and judging those who do), may God help us all learn to parent with a persevering hope in the gospel to do what we can never do in our own strength.
3. Disciplinary Consequences at Covenant Life School
Many of the concerns shared by members in the meetings we’ve had stemmed from their experiences with Covenant Life School. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with our school, let me provide some brief background information.Covenant Life School opened its doors in 1979 with the goal of providing a distinctly Christian education for families in our church. It has provided an outstanding education for hundreds of students, and we couldn’t be more proud of both our staff and the quality of students.
As the school grew in size and scope, it consistently expected and enforced high standards of behavior. In cases where students fell significantly short of these standards, disciplinary decisions were made by the School Board, which consisted of school administrators and pastors.
With the addition of a high school program in 1995 came bigger disciplinary issues and more serious disciplinary consequences. You probably aren’t surprised to know that teens raised in strong Christian homes still struggled with temptations to sin. It was common for the Board to expel one or more students during the course of a school year.
All of the administrators and pastors involved in these decisions at the time would have felt they were being faithful to uphold biblical standards of conduct. The School Board made its decisions with the knowledge and support of the pastoral team and sought to communicate genuine care and concern for the families involved.
But after evaluating the fruit of the school’s disciplinary practices over 15 years and receiving honest and gracious input from many members, we have come to see that in some cases our disciplinary consequences were unnecessarily strong, and the effects on those we disciplined were more painful and costly than we realized.
While rightly concerned about protecting the spiritual health of the school community, we as pastors could have done far more to demonstrate care for the individuals being disciplined, and for their families. Removing them and their negative influence from the school community was seen as an urgent priority; restoring them to the school and church community was not. Once they were gone, we as pastors had no clear strategy for pursuing them in love. The result is that they felt cut off from the school, and consequently from the church. As a result, very few of those students who were removed from the school ever returned. Very few are members of our church today. It sobers and saddens us deeply to know that our practices tempted students to feel cut off from the Lord and his grace.
By God’s grace, we have been able to speak with many of these students and their families directly. They have been amazingly quick to forgive. Each conversation has only strengthened our commitment to practice school discipline more wisely, more patiently, and more redemptively in the future.
A number of changes have already been implemented over the past several years. We have involved parents more consistently in the process of evaluating and correcting student behavior. We have modified disciplinary consequences that were excessive. We have added several parent members to our School Board to ensure that school policies and practices benefit from their vital perspective. And we have grown significantly in expressing God’s redeeming love for students before, during and after the disciplinary process. I think we are moving in the right direction.
If you’re a parent or a student who would like to sit down and discuss any past issue in the school, please contact one of the pastors. We would be happy to revisit any issue and hear your perspective.
Our prayer is that Covenant Life School would thrive as a community of grace where our sons and daughters – all sinners like us – are supported and encouraged as they grow up into Christ. When they stumble, we want to help them regain their footing and press on toward the prize. And if some are disqualified from attendance because of their sin, we will do all in our power to assure them of our love, our commitment, and our vision for their return.
Conclusion
Those are my three categories. But let me take a moment to express my regret to you on behalf of your pastors.
Where our leadership was characterized by these patterns—in ways that I’ve shared and in ways I haven’t fully seen— we want to ask you to forgive us. We’ve been wrong. Deficiencies in our leadership have been hurtful to some of you. We are very sorry. Please forgive us.
There are people who have left Covenant Life over the years in part because of the very areas we’re talking about. I know many people who have grown up here whose walk with God has been significantly hindered by these issues. I want to try and get this apology out to them. We’re going to have the audio of tonight’s message available online and hope you’ll pass it along to anyone who needs to hear it.
And if you’re one of these people, and you’re listening to this some time in the future, please hear this: we’re asking for your forgiveness, too. And we sincerely pray that our failures as pastors and our failures as a local church will not hinder you from trusting in the perfect Savior Jesus Christ. If you’re thriving in your faith in another church, we praise God. But if you’re not walking with Jesus, and in some way our practice and example has distorted your view of Jesus, please forgive us and please turn back to him.
I realize you may never love Covenant Life or come back to this church, but I hope that you will come back to Jesus if you’ve strayed. And I want you to know that we would love to have you join us again at Covenant Life as we seek to grow in grace together. By the power of the gospel of grace, we are committed to growing and changing with God’s help.
For everyone here tonight and anyone listening, if you want to sit down with any of the pastors and talk about any specific circumstances from the past, please contact any of the pastors. We would love to do that.
I recognize that this apology doesn’t fix anything if you’ve been hurt, but I pray that God will use it to bring healing and closure for you.
What This Doesn’t Mean
I realize that some of what I’ve shared may raise questions or even concerns for some. Maybe you’d say, “I never experienced what you’re describing.” I’m very glad if that’s the case. I think we all need to remember that in a church our size different people will have different experiences based on factors like the age of our children and the circumstances of our lives. What’s most important for me to state is that the basic values of our church are not changing at all.Let me state as clearly as possible what all this “doesn’t mean.”
- It doesn’t mean we’re saying everything we’ve done in the past has been wrong. There’s so much grace we can celebrate in our church!
- It doesn’t mean we’re going to care less about holiness. We need to be challenged by the Word of God. But we also need to help each other cultivate conviction by studying God’s Word for ourselves.
- It doesn’t mean that wisdom and godly practice don’t matter. But how we relate to each other when we disagree is an important area in which we can grow. So we’re going to study in the coming days what Scripture teaches about Christian freedom, how to relate to people with different standards, and how to avoid self-righteousness even as we hold up biblical standards for righteousness.
- It doesn’t mean that everything is fixed, and now we have perfect church. I wish it did! But we will continue to need to mature. We will continue to need to be refined by God’s Word. We as your pastors will continue to need your input, feedback and questions. We will still make mistakes.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I’m glad to say that in many of these areas we have already been growing and changing. Part of the reason this statement tonight is important is because we need to publicly acknowledge where we’re seeking to change so that we can better press ahead. This is another area where I’ve realized my leadership needs to improve. At times we’ve changed our practices, but I’ve not clearly explained why.I’ve not clearly stated where we realize we’ve gotten things wrong. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to see this and share this with you. But here we are ... better late than never!
It’s a funny thing. I’ve never been more aware of my deficiencies as a leader. And yet I’ve never had more faith for the future of Covenant Life Church. I am so honored to serve as one of your pastors. I feel God humbling me, and yet I am more aware of his presence and his grace than ever.
He is with us. He is doing good to us. He is disciplining us because he loves us. And I believe he is positioning us to be more faithful and effective in the mission of reaching lost people with the gospel. All the areas that I’ve shared with you tonight are areas in which changing and growing will help us better welcome and disciple unbelievers.
God is not helping us see our mistakes to rub our noses in our failure—he is moving us forward in our mission. He is refining us so that we can better reflect and display the glories of the gospel. He is refining us so that we can be a church where people encounter grace and love and compassion. He is at work for his glory and our good.
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