"Common Roots", part III : Mission

This newly-born church community that we call “The Commons”, here in Rochester, NH is blessed to be the adopted child of a global family of faith known as the Evangelical Covenant Church. For the reason that, for most of our launch team partners this journey of church planting has constituted a running introduction to the mere existence of the ECC - never mind vision, values and so on - my hope is to offer this short series of articles as a primer on the essential history and distinctives of the Covenant as our denominational and spiritual “home”. These articles will be framed around the six central “Covenant Affirmations” of the ECC, with a focus upon the historical forces that led to their articulation. May God bless and establish this new work, that as we grow in our awareness of where and how the Spirit of God has moved in and through our past, we might also grow in clarity and conviction regarding our future!

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Part III: “We affirm a commitment to the whole mission of the Church.” 

“The early Covenanters were known as “Mission Friends”— people of shared faith who came together to carry out God’s mission both far and near. Mission for them and for us includes evangelism, Christian formation, and ministries of compassion, mercy, and justice. We follow Christ’s two central calls. The Great Commission sends us out into all the world to make disciples. The Great Commandment calls us to love the Lord our God and our neighbors as ourselves.” 

In the light of historical pietism, we would well read this affirmation as a commitment to the whole mission of the WHOLE Church. That is to say, as we understand it, no disciple of Jesus is exempt from the call of his commission and commandment.

Looking back to 1675, we remember that Philip Jacob Spener’s second reformation proposal was the establishment and exercise of the “spiritual priesthood” of ALL believers. In a religious context defined by a highly professionalized, state-managed clerical system, designed as a reliable distributor of religious goods and services to an otherwise uninvolved laity, this was a call to spiritual awakening. Spener was convinced that the the work of the Church was a work that belonged to EVERY follower of Jesus, not just professional, ordained clergy.

With this conviction in view, we can appreciate appreciate how intimately related it is to the previous affirmation regarding the “necessity of new birth”. If the Kingdom mission of Christ belongs not to the select, professionalized few, but in fact to the whole Church, then it becomes all the more important that we understand the “Church” properly. Namely, that the Church is not a mere function of shared nationality, but a living community of people being actively transformed by the saving grace of Christ and thus made ABLE to embrace this work. Which presses us still further back, to appreciate both of these affirmations as the natural outflow of the first: a commitment to the central importance of the Word of God to the life of the Christian. Spener’s “assemblies of piety” (setting the mold for the “conventicles” of the Swedish “mission friends" that would follow him) were an expression of this movement towards transforming devotion to Christ among the general populace. It should not surprise us, then, that as the undercurrents of devotional study, worship and fellowship began to gain strength, that an increase in missional energy and activity resulted. 

It was very much the concern of the pietists that they embody and apply the love of Christ to the brokenness and ills of the society around them, concerning themselves with resourcing education, care for the disadvantaged, and other endeavors of mission and mercy. This missional impetus also quickly moved towards global expressions, as well. It was the Herrnhut Moravians, led by pietist Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (who studied with Franke at the University of Halle), who as a community of only 300 people inspired with evangelistic zeal, sent out their first international missionaries. These pietistic Moravian missionaries would go on to establish the first large-scale Protestant missions movement.

We here at The Commons stand in this commitment to the whole mission of the whole church. Our values - to be a “Woven”, “Neighboring” and “Hopeful” people, actively concerned with the health and flourishing of our city - are a direct expression of this. As part of the broader family that is the Evangelical Covenant, we also participate in the worldwide mission of Christ, as small as we may be. And, in fact, as a newly established church plant of the ECC, our very existence is an expression and proof of the Covenant’s commitment to the continuing Kingdom mission of the Church!