How to Use Confessions and Church Covenants in Ministry

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

0:00:00 – (Matt Smethurst): If you’re ready to go deeper in theology, Southern Seminary’s PhD programs were built for you. With flexible formats from fully online to modular to in person. Southern makes serious doctoral level theological training accessible to the pastor called to bring the depth of God’s word to God’s people. Study with faculty committed to strengthening the church and bring that depth back to the people you, you lead.

0:00:26 – (Matt Smethurst): Visit sbts.edu PhD to learn more.

0:00:34 – (Ligon Duncan): Because all of us go through times of theological fads and tendencies that when we look back on, we go, mmm, that wasn’t so helpful. And the confessions at their best keep us from falling prey to that.

0:01:01 – (Matt Smethurst): Welcome back friends, to the Everyday Pastor, a podcast on the nuts and bolts of ministry from the Gospel Coalition. My name is Matt Smetherst.

0:01:08 – (Ligon Duncan): And my name is Lig Duncan.

0:01:10 – (Matt Smethurst): And today we’re going to be thinking about the underrated value of confessions. Don’t fall asleep. Church documents.

0:01:18 – (Ligon Duncan): Oh yeah, oh yeah.

0:01:19 – (Matt Smethurst): Confessions of faith, Church covenants. Don’t turn this off. Notice the word underrated underutilized. We honestly hope that the next several minutes of conversation pastor, will help you perhaps re envision the role that confessions of faith and other documents can play in the life of your church. Not only for building up the saints, but for promoting church unity. So let’s just start broad level Lig, by talking about what is the historic function of confessions of faith in the context of a local church and how have you seen them be beneficial in your own ministry?

0:01:59 – (Ligon Duncan): Well, confessions of faith especially began to be written in the 16th century during the time of the Reformation, to express not only what local churches, but groups of Christians with the same theological affinity confess to believe what the Bible taught. There were already differences in how to understand the Bible between different, different groups, Lutherans and Calvinists and others in the 16th century Reformation. And they, as a way of expressing liberty of conscience, started writing down their understanding of what the Bible taught as a public profession to the world. Hey, we believe these things.

0:02:43 – (Ligon Duncan): And as a tool for unity within those various fellowships of churches. And so by the time you get to the 17th century, the the way that confessions of faith are functioning is to show not every Christian who believes the main things that are a part of the Christian affirmation of the Christian faith agrees on every doctrinal issue. And as a way of trying to find room for freedom of conscience under the umbrella of a Protestant profession of Christianity, different groups wrote confessions of faith. So in England in the 1640s, in the wake of the English Civil War, the parliament actually called for a Group of theologians.

0:03:41 – (Ligon Duncan): The members of Parliament were to nominate one or two pastors from every one of their constituencies in England and in Wales and in Ireland to come to Westminster and create a document that would reform the teaching of the Church of England. Almost everybody wanted the Church of England to be more Reformed. They thought it was too squishy on some issues and it needed to be more like the Reformed churches on the continent.

0:04:17 – (Ligon Duncan): And after they started the work, you know, there’s a shot at us having a pan Protestant sort of confession of faith for all the Protestants in the British Isles. And so they write the Westminster Confession of Faith. Well, by that time you already have a Baptist movement in Britain. You have people that are convinced of congregational government in Britain. You have people that believe in erastinism, where the government is over the church.

0:04:44 – (Ligon Duncan): You’ve got all sorts of beliefs. Well, they produce confessions of faith as well. And it serves to articulate their convictions about the Bible’s teaching in particular areas. So the Baptists have a confession of faith that they write in London in the 1640s and then they write another one in the 1680s and then they use the same one in Philadelphia in the 1740s when they get to the United States. And so those confessions of faith. I love reading statements of faith.

0:05:15 – (Ligon Duncan): And there’s a great collection that Jim Dennison did of Protestant confessions of faith from the 16th to the 18th centuries. It’s a four volume set that you can get from. I think it’s a four volume. It’s either a three or four volume set that you can get from Reformation Heritage Books. And I just find it fascinating to read those statements of faith. They’re really edifying to read even when you differ with things, the way they put things.

0:05:45 – (Ligon Duncan): I find them incredibly edifying to read.

0:05:48 – (Matt Smethurst): That’s really helpful. So what is the role of the Westminster Confession in PCA churches today?

0:05:55 – (Ligon Duncan): The role of the confession in PCA churches is much more like it would have been historically in the Scottish churches, the Irish churches and in early American presbyterianism. In the 20th century, Presbyterian churches drifted theologically from the Westminster Confession. And so, so the adherence to the confession in say from 1900 to 1975 was at a low ebb in American Presbyterianism and Bible believing Presbyterians basically until

0:06:30 – (Matt Smethurst): the creation of the PCA in 1975

0:06:33 – (Ligon Duncan): and a group of other very the ARPs, the OPCs, there’s some other smaller Presbyterian denominations that have a high view of Scripture and they want to affirm the teaching of the confessions on God, on salvation, on Christ, on Those central things again. And so there’s a renewal of interest in the confession. So the way it works in the PCA is only ministers and elders and deacons subscribe to the confession, and congregation members are not required to subscribe to the confession.

0:07:09 – (Ligon Duncan): Partly that is to protect freedom of conscience amongst congregation members. Congregation members only have to answer the five questions of membership. But officers have to say, yep, this is what we believe. This is what we’re gonna teach in the church. This is gonna be the position from

0:07:28 – (Matt Smethurst): which the public can officers take exception to anything.

0:07:31 – (Ligon Duncan): Officers can take exception. How those exceptions are handled depend on what the exceptions are. Some exceptions are rel. Relatively minor and then some exceptions can be pretty significant. And so they’re handled in different ways. But yes, officers are able to take exception to the confession. We make it clear that the confession is the subordinate standard under Scripture. And so obviously the scripture can cross examine the confession, but the individual teaching of a person can’t trump the church’s public profession. Like if you had an individual said, well, I don’t agree with what the confession says about the doctrine of the Trinity, that’s a very significant thing.

0:08:16 – (Ligon Duncan): That individual couldn’t say, well, I’m going to follow the Bible. You all are following the confession. No, we’re going to say no. The reason we adhere to the confession is because we’re following the Bible. It’s not you and your Bible versus us in our confession. It’s the majority of the church says, we believe the Bible says this and you deny the doctrine of the Trinity. So you can have serious exceptions and then you can have things that are of lesser importance.

0:08:45 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah. In our church or Baptist church, we have a statement of faith which is largely adapted from the New Hampshire confession, which is a historic, broadly reformed, though not as strictly Calvinistic as the 1689 broadly Reformed confession of faith that was drafted in 1833, revised in 1853. And then of course, our statement of faith has some updated language around marriage, gender, sexuality, things along those lines.

0:09:14 – (Ligon Duncan): Is that something that is utilized in other congregations than your own Matt? Is that something that circulates around in.

0:09:22 – (Matt Smethurst): It is informally. So if you compared our statement of faith to that of a few dozen other Baptist churches, you would notice, I would say, a family resemblance in terms of what’s going on. But of course we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. Again, it’s largely adapted from the New Hampshire confession while addressing some of these more contested, cutting edge cultural issues. And then we also have a church covenant. So if the statement of faith is what we believe.

0:09:50 – (Matt Smethurst): The church covenant is how we intend to live together. And I love your promises.

0:09:55 – (Ligon Duncan): I love your church covenants. That’s one of the things I sort of jealously look across the fence at. And there’s just some beautiful biblical language in those church covenants about how to. You might share a little bit about that, in fact.

0:10:10 – (Matt Smethurst): Well, yeah, folks can look it up on our website, rivercityrichmond.org, under Beliefs. You can click on church covenant and you can see it’s a set of about 13 promises that a member is making to the church and the church is making to the member. And it’s something that we often recite. So every time we take the Lord’s Supper, we members of the church recite the promises in the church covenant because it’s like a covenant renewal ceremony.

0:10:35 – (Matt Smethurst): We do it at the beginning of members meetings. And I often reference promises in our church covenant in my preaching and application. But even in the five questions of membership in the pca, there are some vow like things. And before you talk about that, our modern culture emphasizes being able to belong without any kind of binding promise. I mean, membership is often framed as access, not obligation.

0:11:08 – (Matt Smethurst): So some people might be listening to this and certainly might have people in their churches who think, well, what the heck? Why are you talking about vows and promises and standards and borders when we’re talking about God’s family? So how would you make the case for this kind of thing in defining the family of God?

0:11:28 – (Ligon Duncan): Yeah, let me say that this doesn’t just start with Baptists. This is something interesting in the Methodist tradition. I didn’t know this until a couple of years ago. Sinclair Ferguson, when he was a student in Aberdeen, would often go preach at a.

0:11:47 – (Matt Smethurst): You have a circuit riding Methodist in your family too?

0:11:49 – (Ligon Duncan): I do. I’m named after a circuit riding Methodist.

0:11:51 – (Matt Smethurst): Okay, that’s what it is.

0:11:52 – (Ligon Duncan): Jennings Ligon was his name and was a circuit rider in South Carolina in the 19th century. And on my wife’s side of the family, they’re Methodist circuit writers as well. But Sinclair, when he was a student, though he was Church of Scotland, he was Presbyterian, would often be asked to preach at this little Methodist church. And he was there one Sunday on the first Sunday of the year and they recited a church covenant. Now, it’s not as long as your church covenant, but I did some research on it. It actually goes back to John Wesley.

0:12:29 – (Ligon Duncan): And Wesley was copying it from a Puritan named Richard Elaine. And so the congregation would say this to one another every first Lord’s day of every new year. I am no longer.

0:12:41 – (Matt Smethurst): I just read about this. Sinclair talks about it. He does his unseen things. Yeah.

0:12:46 – (Ligon Duncan): I am no longer my own but thine. Which sounds very Calvin, you know. We are not our own, but we belong to God. I am no longer my own but thine. God’s put me to what thou wilt rank me with whom thou wilt put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed by thee, or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee, or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing.

0:13:24 – (Ligon Duncan): I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Thou art mine and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen. That’s a, that’s a sobering and significant way to start the year. I had no idea that there was a covenanting tradition amongst the Methodists. So Baptists aren’t the only ones that have done this.

0:13:57 – (Ligon Duncan): Why would this be a legitimate thing to do? Because we are members of one body. And what one part of the body does impacts every other part of the body. That’s Paul in Ephesians 2, that’s Jesus in John 15. We can go down passage after passage in the New Testament that emphasizes we’re part of a household, we’re part of a family, we’re part of a body. And I love the sense of mutual service and concern that are conveyed in beautiful biblical Baptist church covenants. It’s just glorious. You’ve read yours to me before and I just thought that is so good. It makes you think about what your obligations are to your brothers and sisters in Christ.

0:14:47 – (Ligon Duncan): We’re not just acquaintances, we’re family and we’re part of the same body. And that means we owe one another certain things. And so I think it’s a beautiful. It shows how believing and belonging go together. Those things go together and you really can’t do either of them without the other. You need to do both of them together. So I love that tradition. I’ve read, of course, CHBCs. I’ve seen, I’ve seen other Baptist church covenants. I love reading those documents.

0:15:18 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah. And all that’s the case because the New Testament assumes a covenanted people, not just free floating Christians. So if your idea of being a Christian is being a spiritual free agent, if that’s what the people in your church assume, then yeah, this conversation is going to sound exclusive and intimidating and kind of curmudgeonly, but to the degree you have an understanding of being a Christian as one body, many members, where we are taking responsibility for one another, we’re helping each other toward heaven, the kind of pack life aspect of Christianity, then you’re going to be grateful for the borders and the boundaries that a confession provides.

0:16:03 – (Matt Smethurst): The pastor who goes deeper in theology doesn’t just become a better thinker, he becomes a better Shepherd. Southern Seminary’s PhD programs are forming pastor theologians, men who have wrestled seriously with the great tradition of Christian thought and who bring that depth back to the people they love and lead. What you gain in your study, your congregation receives. And Southern Seminary’s faculty are here to support you in your work to strengthen the church.

0:16:32 – (Matt Smethurst): Southern’s PhD program is built to fit alongside your ministry, offering flexible formats from fully online to modular to in person, so you can pursue the kind of rigorous theological training that will change how you pastor without stepping away from your church. If you’re ready to go deeper, Southern Seminary’s PhD program is where that begins. Visit sbts.edu PhD to learn more. So in your own journey and growing doctrinally over the years, how have you seen and grown in your understanding and appreciation of the value of confessions?

0:17:13 – (Ligon Duncan): Well, in a bunch of different ways. Here’s one that comes to mind again. Your generation, Matt, has seen a beautiful recovery of classic Christian and Protestant affirmations about the doctrine of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the doctrine of Christ. And I would have resonated with that as a seminary student, but that was not what was happening in the 1980s. In fact, two of my favorite professors from whom I learned an enormous amount and who are both in glory with Jesus right now, articulated some really idiosyncratic stuff on the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of Christ.

0:17:59 – (Ligon Duncan): And the only thing that protected me from kind of going with them in that quirky direction because I respected their views in every area that they talked about. They were so knowledgeable, they were so godly and spiritual and convictional. The only thing that protected me from kind of following them in their quirkiness in those areas was the confession of faith. And I just thought, I don’t know enough yet to differ from the confession of faith.

0:18:31 – (Ligon Duncan): I think I’m just gonna stick with a confession of faith until I can figure it out. And now we’ve had this explosion of wonderful young scholars that are working in precisely those areas. So whether it’s James Dolezal or Bobby Jamison or Scott Swain, we can go down a long list of guys, Presbyterians, Baptists, Anglicans, and others who’ve worked hard in the area of the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the faith, the person of Christ, who have corrected some of the quirks that my wonderful beloved professors had.

0:19:06 – (Ligon Duncan): And what I’ve realized is, wow, the Confessions got this exactly right. You pick up your Baptist confession of 1689, it’s gonna have this right. You pick up your Westminster Confession, it’s gonna have it right. You pick up the Savoy Declaration of the Congregationalists, it’s gonna have this right. You pick up the Anglican articles, the Irish articles, it’s gonna have this right.

0:19:25 – (Matt Smethurst): So our forebears, not to mention Nicene Creed, apostasy, Correct?

0:19:28 – (Ligon Duncan): Correct. Yeah, exactly.

0:19:30 – (Matt Smethurst): Back in the day. In other words, these are not straight jackets. They’re rumble strips to keep you from swerving off.

0:19:37 – (Ligon Duncan): They keep you in the right lane. And I’ve gone back with an appreciation for the young scholars that are teaching me so much and realizing, wow, the confession really protected me when I didn’t know enough to make a judgment on my own. And that’s how it’s supposed to work, right? As you say, it’s not a straitjacket. It’s actually there to keep you in the center of the road and not sort of swerving off.

0:20:08 – (Ligon Duncan): Because all of us go through times of theological fads and tendencies that when we look back on we go. That wasn’t so helpful. And the Confessions at their best, keep us from falling prey to that. So that’s one area that I’ve seen. Another area, though, Matt, is just being able to help identify what the majors and the minors are. You can have a lot of people with really amped up convictions about what we have to preach about and what we need to address and what we need to talk about.

0:20:51 – (Ligon Duncan): And the Confessions really give you an idea of, hey, here’s what the historic church thinks we need to be amped up about. You know, we need to be amped up about God, we need to be amped up about the Trinity, we need to be amped up about Christ, we need to be amped up about the Gospel, we need to be amped up about justification. You know, it just lays out these things and it says, these are really important things that all of us need to be talking about.

0:21:17 – (Ligon Duncan): And that sort of says the urgencies of the moment, those things may be important, but that these things are important. This year, they’ll be important. In 10 years, they’ll be important. In 10,000 years. And so I wanna make sure that the diet and the emphasis of my preaching is on these lasting things that aren’t just sort of fluctuating through the moments of our time.

0:21:43 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah, they’re pregnant like confessions of faith statements of faith, they’re pregnant with unity forging potential, because like you said, they establish the common core, the things we’ve agreed to agree on. And therefore they regulate the temperature of our debates. Will our church speak in an official capacity to X issue? Well, if the statement of faith addresses it, we absolutely will. If the statement of faith sort of addresses it, we might. And if the statement of faith doesn’t address it, we may not.

0:22:19 – (Matt Smethurst): Now, that’s not to say that it wouldn’t come out in a pastoral prayer or in sermon application, but in terms of what we’re requiring agreement on in order to become a member of the church, we’ve said here are the boundaries, here’s the borders, and there’s actually therefore a lot of room for Christian freedom. There’s a lot of room for differences even among church members over third rank doctrines and issues.

0:22:48 – (Matt Smethurst): And so I found it helpful to think about it as those rumble strips or those guardrails, because not all doctrines. We did a whole episode on theological triage, but not all doctrines are created equal. And it’s helpful for pastoring because so many of the things that have our members heated not just with the world, but perhaps toward one another, are not necessarily things over which church members have to agree.

0:23:20 – (Matt Smethurst): There’s Galatians 1 and there’s Romans 14. And there’s a danger of treating Galatians 1 issues, gospel issues, as if they’re debatable matters like they’re in Romans 14. And there’s a danger of treating Romans 14 issues as if they’re gospel issues. And so I think it requires a lot of wisdom, maturity for pastors to have that depth perception to see how.

0:23:44 – (Ligon Duncan): And you were even saying, we were talking before we started the conversation, that what confessions decide not to address, that’s instructive too. And in the room that the confessions of faith will build in on certain issues, that’s instructive. And Sinclair Ferguson, in his lectures on the Westminster Confession, often points out that the confession was designed to be a consensus document. It wasn’t trying to solve every theological issue amongst Reformed folks. And in fact, it deliberately built room for, yeah, you can hold this perspective, this perspective, this perspective and still be able to affirm the confession. And that’s. We were talking about the New Hampshire confession. It’s a broadly reformed confession.

0:24:34 – (Ligon Duncan): If you were a strong particular redemption guy, you can sign the New Hampshire confession, but it doesn’t say some of the things that you might say if you were only writing a document that was going to affirm particular redemption. So substitutionary atonement, certainly it’s very clear on that. But that’s an example of building room and allowing some theological latitude on certain things in order to promote the unity of the church as well as the purity of the church. And confessions at their best are thinking about both ends of those things.

0:25:17 – (Matt Smethurst): I think it’s a fine balance because we want to have statements of faith that are robust enough where it’s clear that, hey, we actually stand for stuff, but we also don’t want a statement of faith that’s so comprehensive that we’re requiring agreement on from members to where you basically have to be a really well taught, really well discipled Christian just to join the church. And so I think one of the most counterintuitive lessons that we would commend to pastors from all of this is that one way to preserve sound doctrine is to leave ample room for Christian freedom. Now, the reason that’s counterintuitive is because sometimes we doctrine guys might think, you know, we need to take a stand on everything.

0:26:06 – (Matt Smethurst): But the danger in not leaving room for Christian freedom. That is, the things as a church you’ve not agreed to agree on, the things that are not codified in the statement of faith is that you end up sticking more into the gospel than is there, demanding agreement on a wider range of issues than the gospel itself requires, and therefore you run the risk of succumbing to legalism. So it’s a real fine kind of balancing act to figure that out.

0:26:37 – (Matt Smethurst): But we want to be clear, we’re not saying, I mean, the Bible commands ministers to preach the whole counsel of God. So a pastor ought to speak biblically, courageously, prophetically about any number of issues that the text presents. But that doesn’t mean that uniformity must be required on every one of those issues in order to be a member of the church.

0:27:04 – (Ligon Duncan): I also think that as I look back on the history of my own denomination, that the leaders of the church have been very wise to recognize when you don’t need a hammer, all you need is a nudge. And they would very often, instead of trying to add to the confession or add requirements, they would produce a pastoral letter in which they gave a little nudge. And they said, we don’t think this is the best way of handling things.

0:27:36 – (Ligon Duncan): And that was all that was needed to cause some sort of a goofy movement to collapse. Just a little pastoral nudge. And we can do that as pastors in a local church too, because sometimes when you, you double down hard on something, you create a reaction. And sometimes just a little nudge is all the quirky tendency needs. And you’re not trying to find one syllable in your confession that absolutely outlaws anybody ever thinking that in the corner of the room, in their house, at home alone. But you just.

0:28:17 – (Ligon Duncan): No, the better way to approach that would be this way. And sometimes the Lord will use that in remarkable ways to steer people back onto the main path. And so confessions of faith can’t solve every problem. And that’s for one thing, because new things come up. You mentioned, for instance, you’ve got a church covenant that draws on things like the New Hampshire Confession and the Abstract of principles, but man, now we’ve got issues popping up on gender, marriage and sexuality.

0:28:51 – (Ligon Duncan): So you’ve got to do some crafting of language that wasn’t there for you before. Because 300 years ago, if we had gone to a group of Baptists and Presbyterians and said, what do you think about trans? They would have said, what? So you have to do some work in the contemporary to address issues that are new. And so you cannot cover every possible issue, but you’ve got to pick some that you have to take a stand on. And in that case, there’s a historic connection there back to the doctrine of man and to the doctrine of marriage that you can draw a line from and address.

0:29:29 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah, absolutely. And once again, we’ve talked about what your church believes, also how a church intends to live together, the promises that we call a church covenant, some of those promises are kind of baked into your five questions. So as we think of membership as something that involves vows, something that involves real accountability and commitment, what does that look like in joining a Presbyterian church?

0:29:56 – (Ligon Duncan): And these questions have been around maybe for 100 years or so, Matt. I’ve not done the thorough historical study of them that I want to, but certainly the PCA has used these from the very beginnings. And you’ll find similar sounding vows in other Bible believing Presbyterian and Reformed denominations. But our five questions are, do you acknowledge yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving his displeasure and without hope, save in Jesus Christ?

0:30:30 – (Ligon Duncan): So you’re acknowledging your need for Christ and your sinful estate, and you’re deserving of judgment. The second question is, do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners? And do you receive and rest on him alone for your salvation as he is offered in the gospel? So we’re wanting to make sure that they have put their faith in Jesus Christ, that they understand who he is.

0:30:54 – (Ligon Duncan): He’s the Son of God and he’s the Savior of sinners. He’s the Lord Jesus Christ. All of that is full of theological significance. Then the third question kind of moves to sanctification and it moves towards our obligation to one another in the congregation. Do you now resolve in promise, in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit that you will endeavor to live as becomes a follower of Christ?

0:31:20 – (Ligon Duncan): Then do you promise to support the church in its worship and work to the best of your ability? And do you submit yourself to the government and discipline of the church and promise to study its purity and peace? So the latter three questions start dipping into the areas that your church covenant so beautifully elaborate. So why don’t you share your church covenant?

0:31:50 – (Matt Smethurst): Well, yeah, I wasn’t going to share it, but I did pull it up. Here we go. So, yeah, this is our members covenant. It’s essentially the vows we make to one another. And again, we recite this often, and I consult it and appeal to it often in my preaching. And I find that it’s a great way to kind of bring us all back to that sense of corporate, not just stewardship, but ownership of one another’s spiritual welfare.

0:32:17 – (Matt Smethurst): By God’s grace, we have been brought to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, having been joined to him by His Spirit and affirmed as Christians through church membership. So we now solemnly and joyfully renew our covenant with each other that God enabling us. And then here are the promises. We will walk together in love as brothers and sisters, a family of sinners saved by grace. We will labor for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, bearing patiently with each other and freely forgiving as we have been forgiven in Christ.

0:32:51 – (Matt Smethurst): We will pursue transparency with each other, resisting the temptation to hide our struggles and sins that we might experience the grace of God in the care of his saints. We will commit to the ministry of attendance, regularly gathering with the whole church for worship and fellowship because no one can faithfully follow Jesus alone. We will commit to the ministry of prayer and to pursue each other’s good as we encourage frequently, admonish gently and receive correction humbly.

0:33:24 – (Matt Smethurst): We will be active in evangelism, taking the initiative to proclaim Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, leaving the results to God. We will endeavor as the family of Christ to bring up the children under our care in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We will rejoice at each other’s happiness and endeavor with tenderness and sympathy to bear each other’s burdens and sorrows. We will contribute cheerfully and regularly to the ministry of the church, to the needs of our neighbors, and to the spread of the Gospel from the heart of Virginia to the ends of the earth.

0:33:58 – (Matt Smethurst): If we leave this congregation, we will join another gospel preaching church as soon as possible where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant and the principles of God’s Word. And here’s the final one. And through life, whatever opposition may come, we will live for the glory of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. I love being able to point to that as a pastor, to remind all of us, myself included, what we’ve signed up for when we’ve stepped into the sheep pen by God’s grace.

0:34:31 – (Matt Smethurst): We hope this conversation has been encouraging to you. We hope maybe you’ll even consider dusting off your documents and putting your statement of faith, your church covenant to use if you have those. If you don’t, whatever your polity or tradition allows, look into codifying what you believe is a church. Please do not be the kind of church Dear Listener, where we go to your website and we have a hard time finding anything about what you believe.

0:34:58 – (Matt Smethurst): Clarity is kindness. Truth in advertising is love. And we hope you’ll recommend this episode to a fellow pastor so they can find fresh joy in the work of ministry.