Christ Covenant Community Church

"What We Value"

Like individual believers, each church God establishes has its own unique personality. We have listed below, in random order, some of the personality traits of Christ Covenant Community Church of Hendersonville. We recognize there are true churches that differ from us on some or perhaps many of these issues, though certain aspects ought to be part of any church. We are hopeful of receiving into our church those who will help us reflect these characteristics.

Joy in Christ
Joy is the birthright of every believer. We hope our joy is contagious. We sincerely love being Christians and being in this church, where we receive so much encouragement to live out what we believe. Our joy comes from our belief in the goodness of God toward His own children.

Christian intimacy and affection
One of the reasons we meet in community groups is tied to this idea that smaller groups make for better intimacy. Love is the highest mark of Christian maturity, so we place a huge emphasis on hospitality, good deeds, open relationships, listening, and sharing life together.

The centrality of Bible teaching
The Bible is at the heart of all we do. We are always talking about its truths. Not only do the elders lead the church through consecutive Bible passages weekly, but almost every meeting of the church is characterized by seriousness about the Word of God.

The value of life in the church
We all think of our church life as integral to life itself. In other words, our lives center around God, our families, and our church. Following Christ is all about the Body of Christ and is not to be done individualistically. Our meetings are not just tacked on to our lives, but explain who we are. Being together is worth any sacrifice.

The use of homes for hospitality
We do not believe that churches are commanded by God to meet exclusively in homes (as did the early Christians), but we do believe that opening our homes has huge benefits for our individualistic, isolated culture. We also see how utilizing our homes enables us more easily to fulfill the Bible's "one another's."

Church Purity
It is important to us to know that our church is regenerate and that each member is walking in obedience and faith toward God. Church discipline is essential for biblical purity to be maintained. We also sign our Church Covenant in front of our fellow members in order to demonstrate our desire to help the church remain as pure as possible.

Leadership by men
The men are aware of their unique position among the body as leaders, both in the home and in the church. We are complementarian (i.e., men and women are equal before God, but have differing, complementary roles) in our view of the relationship of men and women, not egalitarian (i.e. men and women have no differences in roles either in the home or church). Therefore the men are mentored by the elders in a special way for this leadership role.

Exemplary womanhood
In many ways, the women of Christ Covenant are like the circulatory system in our church, bringing life to every part. They hope to demonstrate biblical womanhood by their faith and good deeds. Our girls look up to the women of our church as models of godliness and tender care. Though no woman carries out her responsibilities perfectly, and each woman is in need of God's daily help, the church is abundantly strengthened by them.

Active attendance by every member
For us, there is no such thing as a non-active member. Each person who signs our Church Covenant commits to active involvement in the life of the church. When we meet, everyone is present. If a person or family cannot be there because of extenuating circumstances, they keep the rest informed. We are a true body.

Multiplication through community groups
The church is growing and hopefully will continue to grow through the multiplication of Community Groups throughout our city and county. Growth through Community Groups is exponential and somewhat unpredictable. The demand for new leadership is one of our major concerns as the church grows larger in number and smaller through groups.

Weekly Lord's Supper for believers
Every week our congregation takes the Lord’s Supper; and on the first Lord’s Day of every month we enjoy a fellowship meal along with the addition of the special symbols (the bread and the cup). Guests who are baptized believers in good standing with a biblical church are invited to partake of the bread and cup with us. Visiting unbelievers are welcome to join us for the meal and observe but do not partake of the bread and cup. This is done in such a way as not to embarrass our guests. We believe the early church took the Lord's Supper weekly as a precedent, although weekly observance is not commanded.

Participatory meetings
Our meetings are for the purpose of both edifying others and being edified. Worship is also a purpose of our meeting. The church members are encouraged to attend with a participatory mindset. For example, a different male member leads our congregational Scripture Reading each Lord’s Day. The elders are always looking for new ways for members to exercise their gifts among us while gathered together. Even during the exposition of Scripture we encourage brethren to express their agreement (“Amen,” etc.).

Church Life that is organic rather than programmatic
So many churches busy themselves with many programs. Our view is different. We work hard not to be programmatic. This does not mean that we do not plan or that we never have organized meetings. When programs reign, however, the emphasis soon is on methods and people are sometimes forgotten; when we "de-institutionalize," we are more concerned for relationships, God-given authority structure, and the dynamic leadership of Christ, the Head of His church.

A Permanence view of marriage
The elders have settled on what we call "the permanence view" of marriage. Although not every person joining our church must agree fully with our position, he or she must realize that this is the view of the elders and that any divorce or remarriage following membership will be addressed according to this understanding. We are interested in helping those associated with us to view marriage and divorce from God's viewpoint. The elders recommend a book on this subject for further study.

Multi-cultural mindset
Our church pursues multi-culturality in our membership. We hope to enjoy fellowship among the believers from a variety of cultural backgrounds, which, to us, is more glorious and heaven-like. We are not yet where we want to be, but we have the goal in mind and are making significant progress in this area.

An appreciation for God's sovereignty
The members of Christ Covenant value God's sovereignty over all things. Our doctrinal statements reflect our beliefs. We believe that God has revealed much about His Divine supervision of the world, but there is also much that remains a mystery. We intend to teach "the whole counsel of God" by addressing issues of His sovereignty in a balanced way whenever it is found in our preaching and teaching texts.

Meaningful membership
We believe that membership means something in terms of mutual commitment. It opens a door to certain ministry possibilities, to the weekly Lord’s Supper observance, to corporate decision-making, to loving accountability, and to a new level of Christian fellowship. Therefore, we encourage guests not to go longer than three to four months trying out our congregation before joining unless more time is worked out with an elder. We don't believe it is healthy for a true Christian to wait longer than this.

Growing kids with Bible truths
We work hard at training our children to understand the gospel and to live as believers. This takes place mainly at home. Though it is not required of our members to homeschool, some of our members do. All of us, however, labor to make sure the negative influences of the secular culture are countered by good Christian teaching. We also teach children basic Bible truths and help them learn Scripture in our congregational meetings. Children are an integral part of the church meetings, even though they sometimes are distracting.

Mentoring through relationships
In our view, training men, women, and youth is best done through loving, mentoring relationships. We have other methods, such as weekly Bible studies, conferences, and personal studies, but the heart of all of our training is small group mentoring relationships.

Concerned evangelism
When you love someone, you will do anything to help them. Our evangelism is based on love for God and love for others. Our church is vigorously involved in evangelism that is primarily relationship-based. In our congregational meetings we often share about our evangelistic encounters, which provides ongoing stimulus to evangelize.

Equality among elders
Our elders are equal in authority. We realize that experience, gifting, and years of service may play a part in how the elders work within the team, but this does not affect the equality of the team. There is no senior pastor of Christ Covenant. Each man in our leadership team may be called an "elder" or "pastor" or "overseer" since these are used interchangeably in the Scriptures for the same office.

These are several of our distinctives. There are more that may be added. We hope this list of personality traits of our church will help you know us better. For more details, you may wish to search further on this site for more information, or call an elder at your convenience.

*These distinctives were adapted from those of Christ Fellowship of Kansas City. We appreciate the ministry of their elders and home congregations and have received permission to make use of their document for our own purposes. For more information, see www.ChristFellowshipKC.org