Our Common Covenant

We recently finished our 3-week orientation for 2009 with a recommitment to our common covenant. Although our staff personalizes the following covenant to fit their unique gifting and calling, I thought it would be interesting to share our common NieuCommunities' staff covenant with you. Our covenant is built on Communion, Community and Mission, the three threads that run through all that we do. Hopefully, this will help you to know our hearts and the heart of NieuCommunities a bit better.

Our Common Covenant

Communion

We will make the Triune God the center of our lives by:
• praying together for our world, our neighborhood, and one another
• reading scripture together
• worshiping together
• exploring and practicing other spiritual disciplines together
• celebrating and finding joy in the beauty and goodness of God’s creation
• taking a weekly Sabbath and periodically retreating together
• individually extending and expanding on these practices for our own spiritual formation

Community

We will journey together and strengthen one another by…
• living in the same neighborhood
• opening our lives and homes as places of invitation and hospitality
• gathering at least once a week over a common meal
• caring for and submitting to one another and God’s Spirit for guidance
• sharing stories and reflecting on God’s work in our midst
• living increasingly more simply and sharing our economic resources with each other and with those in need
• gathering weekly to be intentionally formed as missional leaders by living the rhythm of listening, submerging, inviting, contending, imagining, and entrusting
• inviting others to join us and allowing them to participate as much as they are able

Mission

We will join in and incarnate the good news of Jesus where he is not known and followed by…
• submerging into neighborhoods of cultural, ethnic and economic fusion, and learning to help people of different classes and colors live and work side-by-side.
• recognizing the earth is the Lord’s and we are called to care for, protect, and work towards its redemption as part of the whole of creation
• occupying the already existing places in our neighborhood—or creating a place if it doesn’t already exist—to be with the people God longs for
• discipling people who want to follow Jesus into a relationship with him
• mentoring those from our neighborhoods to be people of peace and influence
• partnering with our neighbors—as a missional community—in a few carefully selected, kingdom-oriented initiatives that we will engage together and help advance
• inviting our neighbors and friends to join us in periodic gatherings to experience the goodness of God
• living out the fullness of life that God has uniquely created, gifted, and called each of us to live
• apprenticing young leaders to engage all of the above with us and to live missional lives wherever they go