Covenant Stone

This Sunday marks the final worship service for Chase Valley Church. For the next two months, the parking lot on Sunday mornings will be empty, the building dark. Come August, Cove Church@Chase will launch on the 28 acres bequeathed to it by the former ministry.

Despite my best attempts to put on a happy face, I find myself grieving, and looking to Sunday with not a little dread. Obviously not the right frame of heart for approach worship, but nevertheless, the emotion is real.

Several years ago, we as a church body entered a season called 40 Days of Purpose, during which we were encouraged as leaders and as a body to commit ourselves to prayer, small groups and ministry with the goal of "Crossing Jordan." The idea of "Crossing Jordan" was in part founded on the passage in Joshua 4:1-9. During a leadership retreat just prior to this time, a number of us leaders were invited to select from a pile of large, smooth riverbed stones. These stones, one per leader, were to be kept for a period of time until one day, we as a church crossed over into the next phase of our ministry (likely the next tier of numerical and spiritual growth). In that appointed time, we would return with the stones to set up an altar, a memorial, as a testimony to the work of the Lord in our midst, to the furtherance of His Kingdom in the hearts of our community, our city, and beyond. Sadly, seven years later, that stone still sits on a shelf in my garage. And by far most of those leaders who carried those covenant stones are gone.

I keep that stone, in the hopes that perhaps someday, the opportunity will come to lay down that rock as a marker to what Chase Valley was, and what Cove Church will be. But it also serves to remind me of just how easy it is to make choices that keep us wandering in the desert. That stone, and the covenant I made, takes on greater meaning for me each time I question whether it is time for us to look for a new church home. For while so many of my fellow laborers have walked away from that covenant (and despite how that might sound, I don't judge them for it), I as yet do not feel able to give up on the potential that is before us. That stone, that covenant, it anchors me. And I am grateful for it.

As Sunday approaches, I know my heart is broken. But I serve a Lord who knows how to mend a broken heart and make it new. It is that hope, that promise, on which I will stand.