Paul DeCelles talked about a covenant as a solemn agreement which establishes a relationship. He described the advantages of making agreements and a procedure for making them.Â
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
[Recording begins after Paul has already started speaking.]
PAUL: . . . covenants and agreements tonight. . . .
One of the things that—when you look at Scripture, that stands out is the way in which God establishes relationships with people. In fact, the principal way that he establishes relationship is by making an agreement with them. The agreement that God makes with us is called a “covenant,” and there are lots of examples of the covenant in the Old Testament, and Jesus himself is the new “testament,” or new covenant.
What—when you just take a look at some of them, like the covenant that God made with Abraham, where he promised Abraham that he would be our God, and we were—and our part of the bargain, our part of the agreement, is that we should be his people.
The same kind of thing when he—after the flood, when he wiped out all the people except Noah and those with him, he promised Noah that he would never do that again. And that was an agreement on God’s part, initiated by God. Not—it’s not an agreement that was entered into by equal partners; I mean, it’s a clear-cut difference between God and us. And yet, he still, you know, chooses to relate to us according to agreements and covenants. And the agreement that he made with Noah was that he would never do that again. And then he gave a sign. He said that he—the sign was the rainbow, and when you could—when you saw the rainbow, that was evidence of the covenant, that he would never break his promise about that kind of thing again, or the—not that he had before.
And there are lots of covenants of that sort all through the Old Testament. There’s the covenant which he made with Moses, and that got even more particular. He told Moses basically the same thing that he told Abraham: that he would be our God, and that we were supposed to be his people. And then he spelled out in quite a bit of detail what that meant, what it was supposed to be like for us to be a people. And so, he goes through that whole, you know, the whole old law, with all kinds of ways in which we’re supposed to relate to one another. And Jesus says, concerning that law, that not one jot or tittle or one iota—which is the smallest Hebrew letter— you know, nobody should change that law at all. But now that we have the Holy Spirit, we’re able to live that law, whereas before, without the Holy Spirit, we weren’t able to obey the law.
And our Lord has also made a covenant with us in the covenant that we make with him in the covenant of the People of Praise. And we have a definite kind of a way of relating to him and to one another according to that agreement.
What we’ve—one way of looking at—let me tell you what a covenant is, first of all. A covenant is a solemn agreement that establishes a relationship. For example, the relationship between a husband and wife is a covenant agreement. It’s a serious agreement that is made solemnly, and it’s made for a definite length of time—in that case until death do they part. And it’s an agreement which spells out, at least in—you know, fundamentally, the way that they are going to relate to each other for the rest of their lives.
And we make all kinds of agreements in business and in our various occupations, whatever they might be. We might make an agreement, for example, to meet somebody to go to a movie together. And a covenant is like that, in that we make an agreement. But it’s not simply to accomplish a certain purpose, which most agreements are for. But it’s also—it’s an agreement, the very nature of which is that it establishes a basic relationship among us.
And so, the covenant that we make in the People of Praise establishes the relationship among us that we’re brothers. That is, that we say openly, you know, publicly, publicly committing ourselves to being to each other brothers and sisters, based on the fact that Jesus is our brother, and that we’re all sons of God, and that we want to live out that new covenant, that new kind of awareness of the relationship between us and God.
There are lots of different kinds of relationship agreements. The one that we talk about most is the covenant of the People of Praise. But there are also covenants or solemn agreements that people make in households, when they join various kinds of households; it’s for a certain kind of purpose, and first— and with a definite kind of relationship. It may involve things like, when we live together, as we live together in this household, we want to relate to each other always openly. We want to be simply honest with each other. We agree to admonish one another, and not to retaliate when we’re admonished. We agree to always show the affection that we have for one another. That, if we don’t have time to stop and talk with each other, at least we’ll greet each other.
And that kind, you know—there are all kinds of ways of saying this: that these are agreements, but they’re agreements that are aimed at establishing the right relationship between the members of the household.
The advantages of working with agreements and covenants is [sic] that it allows us to deal with a problem that we call the “two expectations problem.” And this is something like—you can imagine the situation, this has happened, where people move together with different understandings of how they want to be to each other in a household.
One person—we had a situation where one person wanted to regard the household—this happened to be a young lady, who wanted to live in the household hoping just to have a place like a crash pad, basically, and wanted to always have a place that whenever she got in trouble she could, you know—she’d always be—that’s where she’d sleep. And if she was lucky, she hoped that people would do things like cook some dinners occasionally, and she’d be there when she could. And if she couldn’t be there sort of easily, she’d be eating dinner someplace else, if she ate at all. And fundamentally, what she wanted was just a place to live.
And somebody else who lived in that household wanted to have a relationship of a real kind of sistership, sisterhood. She wanted, not only, you know—she wanted to grow in affection for that person, and she wanted to spend some time, and she had all kinds. . . . Especially that kind of thing: she wanted to share time and interests. She wanted to have an opportunity to talk, and to develop a friendship.
And so, the one thought that that’s what she was getting into; the other one thought that she was getting into the other kind of situation. And it wasn’t clear to them. They didn’t say very clearly what they wanted to be to each other before they moved into the household.
And after a while, you know, after a couple of months—in fact, it was even shorter than that—one of the women was complaining to me that “that one wants a kind of relationship that I can’t—I really can’t give her. She wants to be very close to me, very personal, and I don’t feel like I—I don’t have the time for that, and I don’t really want that.” And she felt like it was just not working right at all: “There’s something wrong with this.”
And the other one felt like the other one was kind of a boor, and hardhearted, and didn’t care about her at all. And all she wanted was some, you know, kind of a free ride. And so, there was [sic] a lot of problems—there were lots of problems in that relationship and in that household, right from the beginning.
And when the—when a household comes together and makes it clear what they hope to be to each other, what they can expect, what they—what each of them wants of this kind of a relationship, this kind of a living situation, then you get away from that two expectations problem, which is a very big problem.
It also—making agreements like this, or covenants, makes it possible for us to arrive at a new level of trust. And the point here is that, whether you feel like it or not, if you’ve made an agreement, you’re committed to it. And your commitment goes deeper, you know—commitment from the heart—goes deeper from a commitment [than] from the way you feel about things.
Sometimes we tend to want to say, “Well, I’d like to be in this kind of relationship as long as it works well. And as long as it’s going well and I’m enjoying it, I’d like to be in this kind of a relationship.” But the kind of agreement—when you make an agreement, it changes it. It’s not simply that you should be to each other the right kind of way because you feel like it, but that you said that you would be, and you agreed to it. And you spelled that out in some detail so that you—in fact, when—even when you don’t feel like it, and you don’t feel right about it, so to speak, you still do what you said that you would do, and that you are to each other what you say you’re going to be.
And the impact that that has on us as individuals is that we learn that we can, in fact, trust one another, that we do do what we say.
Sometimes this happens: I’ve noticed this a lot, that—it doesn’t happen much now, because I think that we’ve really learned a lot about serving, and how to take care of our own things and how to take care of other people’s things. But some years ago, when people would borrow tools, for example, they would borrow them, and then they would just kind of disappear from the scene, and the person who loaned them didn’t write down, you know, like, “Well, I gave my ladder away to so-and-so,” you know, who said something like, “I’ll bring it back as soon as I’m through with it.” And the other person takes that, you know—on occasion would take that very lightly. Which [sic], “when I’m through with it” meant something like, “when I’m through with the job I’m going to do with it, and when I have time, and feel like it, I’ll bring the ladder back.” And, of course, sometimes that would go on for a month or two or three.
And then the other person would wonder, you know—he’d go out to fix his gutters and say, “What happened to my ladder? I can’t even remember where it is. You know, you just can’t—this is terrible, you know. Every time I want to do anything, it’s not there. I can’t do the work that I want to be doing.” And it ruins the day, makes it impossible to do that job.
But more seriously, it damages the sense of trust that should exist between brothers and sisters, [so] that, the next time somebody, whoever it might be, asks me to borrow, say, whatever it might be, I have a tendency to say, “Well, better put that in writing,” or “I guess I just don’t expect to get that back” and things like that. There’s an element of even kind of—sort of bitterness that can crop up in that kind of thing.
So, when we make commitments, and make them clearly, then things take place in the right kind of way, and what we discover is that a new level of trust is arrived at.
Another thing is that it allows—making agreements and covenants makes it possible for a group of people to begin to function according to a purpose, to have one purpose in mind. It’s like, in the People of Praise, we agree to be brothers and sisters for the sake of, you know—in the name of Jesus, for the praise and glory of the Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit. That is, we have a definite purpose in mind, that we want, you know—we are saying that we’re going to be to each other brothers and sisters for the sake of praising and glorifying the Father and Jesus, and doing the work that Jesus wants—you know, that Jesus is doing here in his body. We’re committing ourselves to doing that work, to being his servants, to being his slaves.
And that—if you don’t have agreements, if you don’t have it very clearly in mind what the common ideal is, or what the purpose is of our union, then things can’t take place. You run into, you know, like, somebody wants—say, like, Phil wants to set up—or let’s say we want to have the Community Formation Series. And we—say, we arrive and [are] ready to start, and there are no chairs set up. Well, if that’s the case, then we can’t go on. We have to stop, set up the chairs, and take time out. And by the time we get started, it’s too late to get on with what we really wanted to do.
So, when Phil has agreed—like, he’s in charge of putting up the chairs on Friday night, and he’s in charge of the physical arrangement generally, and he has real authority over that. That—when he—as he has committed to us in the brotherhood to live out his commitment, then we can, in fact, count on him doing his job, and we can do our job. And we can be here, and be to each other what we’re supposed to be at this time.
Now, there are—I’d like to talk a little bit about making agreements. You might want to jot this down.
One thing is, raise a problem area in the right kind of way and at the right time. I’m going to just give you some steps.
First of all, raise a problem.
Second thing is: reach a solution together.
The third thing is: state the agreement specifically enough to make it effective. For example, who is supposed to do what, when, where, and for how long.
Then, make sure that everybody in—who’s a party to the agreement assents to the agreement verbally.
Remember the agreement. Write it down if it’s necessary. Write it down somewhere.
And call on—and then, the sixth step is: call one another to it. That is, remind each other of the agreement that you’ve made.
And finally: regularly review the agreements that we’ve made. Are they being done? Should they be changed? Are there further agreements that we should make along these lines?
So, let me talk a little bit about some of these things. Some of them are self-explanatory. I’d say that the—when you’re making agreements in a group, whoever is leading the agreement-making has to be careful to see to it that everybody’s freedom is protected. Because a lot of times you’ll be discussing something. . . . It’s good to start off with kind of a brainstorming session.
Let me explain that a little bit. In brainstorming, what you do is, you kind of “shoot from the hip” and say any crazy thing that crosses your mind about the problem that’s being talked about. Like, how could we solve this problem? Okay? Somebody may come up with something really fan—you know, weird, way off—way out from [sic] left field.
The advantage of allowing it to take place—in fact, encouraging it, if you’re in the process of kind of leading this sort of thing, doing it yourself to start it off—is that it frees people up to think some thoughts that were otherwise sort of unthinkable to them, that might be exactly what God wants done. Sometimes some of the craziest things are exactly what God wants us to do. Or maybe we’ll put them a slightly different way, but they turn out to be, you know—the kernel of that weird thought was right on the mark, and that that is exactly what we ought to do. You know, we ought to get at what was being discussed in that—or what was mentioned in that particular wild idea.
And when you go around, giving—make sure that everybody has a chance to say things voluntarily. And if somebody hasn’t said anything, then you should stop and say, “Well, what do you think about it?” Single them out and say, “You haven’t said much about this,” or, “You haven’t said anything. What is your opinion about what we’re talking about? Do you have any ideas, or do you have anything you want to say?” And everybody should contribute.
It may be simply that, “Well, I really don’t have any ideas, but some of those ideas sounded really good to me.” That would—that might be enough. Not everybody has to kind of come up with the right idea. If there’s only one idea and there are 10 people talking, then the one who said it first is the one who says it first. But everybody should say something. Maybe many of them will say, “Well, I really like that particular idea, that particular kind of agreement.”
And then, take the time to sort of verify that everybody understands what it is that’s being agreed to. Spell it out. And sometimes there’s a mistake in the language that you’re using. Sometimes, what we found, when we make—we’ve made some agreements with Dick Keusch, for example, on various occasions. And Dick is—has always been very careful to clarify the language. Like, the language that we use in writing down some of the agreements didn’t really capture the—at first, they kind of talked about the general area and the spirit in which we were addressing the problem, okay? But they were so—they were unclear.
So—but he has a tendency to do something like this: he’ll say, “Well, what if a situation like this arises?” And he’ll mention an example, and then, “How would this agreement have any bearing on that?” Or, “How does it help resolve a problem of that sort?” And frequently, you’ll see that what you’ve said in the agreement is more than you wanted to say. You’ve agreed to more than you meant to agree to—you know, and later on, if you don’t take care of it, later on somebody will come up and say, “Well, what about this? Didn’t we agree to this? Isn’t this an example of that?” And then, the individuals party to this agreement would say, “Well, I didn’t really mean that, when I made—you know, when I assented to that agreement.”
So, what we need to do is to be clear enough, you know, take the time to consider the different possibilities and the meanings of the phrases that we use.
Then go around and see to it that everybody agrees. You know, like, “Do you understand? Do you agree?” You know, “Yeah.” And maybe [the person questioned might ask] some more questions, and then say, “But I really—I do agree to that way of saying it. That’s what I want to do.” Next person says, “Yes, that’s exactly right. I want to do that. I understand that [inaudible].” And so on down the line.
And you come to, say, me, and I’ll say [Paul switches to a nonchalant tone of voice here]: “Yeah, I guess so. . . .”
Well, at that point, everybody should stop and say, “Well, let’s start over,” you know. Because I’m not agreeing! I don’t—I’m not going to get into this kind of an agreement with my heart unless I, say, either understand it, or really do agree to it. And maybe it’s a matter of just making a small change in the wording, or a small change in the direction of the agreement.
So, take the time to go back and rework it, and work it out.
Now, as I mentioned before, some of the agreements that we have, especially the covenant in the community, and some households, have special kinds of agreements that are solemn, that establish relationships, that are, in fact, covenants. They’re—they should be stated as a relationship. They shouldn’t be stated as a business contract.
We can also—for example, we say, in the covenant that we make in the People of Praise, that we agree to have—to take care and concern for everybody individually in all things: material, spiritual, and financial. Now, does that mean that I’m supposed to take my bank account and just sign it over to a common fund?
That’s one way that you can take care of one another in all things material and financial: that I would consider my house, just—you know, my house is at the disposal of the coordinators. They can do with the house whatever they want to. They can just run the house. Now, that’s a possibility. That was, in fact, very similar—that is what happened in the Acts of the Apostles in chapter 4, that kind of thing.
The—but that’s not what we say. What we say is that we want to take care—we want to have that kind of relationship that we know that we can count on each other for whatever we need. And we agree that we will take care of each other in that kind of way.
For example, one thing that—this kind of a relationship existing has affected some people’s insurance programs. Some people have cut back on their insurance programs, and others have increased their insurance programs for the following reasons.
One was that “I’m carrying $150,000 worth of insurance—death benefit insurance.” That is to say, “I expect that, if I die, I’ve got to provide for my wife and my family because nobody else in the world cares about them. And I’ve got to have enough money so that they can carry on with some kind of a trust fund in that way.” Okay? Now, that’s one way to proceed.
Now, one person in a situation like that, after being in the community a while, decided after talking it over with the coordinators that he would, in fact, cut back on his insurance so that he wouldn’t be paying that huge premium, in order that he would be able to take that money and use it for the sake of his brothers and sisters now. And the idea there is that if—he knows that if he were to die, that his family, in fact, would be part of the People of Praise, and that we would take care of that family. And the question in his mind was, “Well, I want to cut back. How far should I cut back? Should we just get rid of all the insurance?” That’s a possibility.
So, we talked about that. And what he—what we agreed to was that the thing to do was to have enough insurance to basically kind of insure the People of Praise. You know, it’s like—it would be—you have kind of a responsibility to all your brothers and sisters not to—well, you have a responsibility to leave them enough money so that they can, in fact, take care of your family without an unnecessary burden, you know, an overwhelming burden. Unless it became necessary, you know, that somehow—that the burden—that there would be, in fact, a whole support system without any insurance.
Now I’m not trying to sell you any insurance. [Laughter.] What I’m getting at is that, without saying specifically what the nature—what, rather—without saying specifically what the agreement is concerning the way we’re going to take care of each other, we’re able to say that we are going to take care, we’re committed to take care of one another. Those who are underway are committed to try it. Those who make the covenant are committed to do it, you know. But that’s a different kind of a statement, that they really are committed to that.
We also need to make, around covenants like this, at least covenants that establish relationships: we need to make some agreements. So, for example, some people do need to know if—what the nature of, say, the status of their house is. You know, is this a house which is owned by People of Praise, or is this a house which I should buy? Is it a house which, if I die, goes over to somebody else? What exactly is the character of the specific agreement about the disposition of this land and this property?
Now those are some pretty heavy things. But what I’m getting at here is that, on the one hand, we are making a full commitment, a total commitment of our whole lives, when we make the covenant of the People of Praise. We say that [sic] “I want to throw in completely.” Like, “I’m committing my whole life to the People of Praise.” Now, exactly how that’s worked out will vary according to the agreements that are built upon the basic covenant, and the basic commitment.
So, we need to get into covenant agreements more slowly and carefully, so that we will be faithful to them. We need to understand the relationship that’s being talked about first. How do you, in fact, live as a member of the People of Praise? What does that entail, in fact? What are people expecting of me? What am I agreeing to?
We also need to get to know the people that we are committing ourselves to.
And, the last point about covenants that I want to make is that covenants should normally be solemnly agreed to, before the Lord. This is an agreement that we make in—you know, with the Lord witnessing the agreement, that we’re really committing ourselves. And that’s—that—for example, the covenant—when we make the covenant of the People of Praise, that’s exactly—the Lord is kind of the witness and the guarantor of the covenant which we’re—of the agreement that we’re making with each other.
Well, let’s stop now, go to our discussion groups quickly. We’ve only got about 20 minutes to discuss. And I’d like you to share ways in which you have seen covenants and agreements work to help relationships, and discuss how we can make use of them more effectively.
Let’s—I want to remind everybody again to be here on time. We’ve got to be able to start. . . .
[Recording ends here.]
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