Why a Church Covenant? A Sermon by John Piper

Read or hear the sermon.

Here's a portion of it:

One of the reasons we don't feel the necessity of a church covenant today is because we take the existence of local churches so for granted. There are thousands of them in the greater Twin Cities. So we don't often ask the question: what constitutes a visible local body of believers as a church?

But put yourself back into the early 1600s in America. As the early Congregationalists and Baptists struggled with the formation of new churches, they wrestled with just what made a group of people into a church. The answer given again and again was that what made a group of persons a church was a covenant—a solemn pledge to one another that they would believe in Christ and worship and minister in common.