Covenant for Returning to Worship

Rhonda Abbott Blevins, Pinnacle Web Design Coordinator

My church recently sent out a survey to members inquiring about readiness to return to corporate worship. Roughly 20% of our local population were not ready to return to worship any time soon, while 80% were ready. Of that 80%, nearly half were ready to return only if they believed adequate precautions were being followed. One person commented, “I want to know others are being as safe as I am being.”

A physician in our congregation suggested we adopt a “social contract,” an agreement for mutual benefit between individuals and the community as a whole. “Ah!” I said. “The biblical term for that is ‘covenant.’”

As we have been preparing for a return to in-person worship, there have been at least a million decisions: Every other pew or checkerboard? Require masks or not? Singing or no singing? What type of disinfectant is best? What do we do with children? What about communion? Where’s the valium? (That last one is just for fun.) As a church leader, my focus has been on the church’s responsibility in providing a safe(ish) atmosphere for worship. I completely neglected the fact that everyone in the church must share responsibility for keeping one another safe.

That’s where “covenant” comes in. Simply put, a covenant is an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified. A covenant for returning to worship should be simple—too many clauses and the impact is lost.

The following is the covenant we adopted at my church—feel free to adapt for your setting if you find it helpful.