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I taught this lesson this week. It seemed to go well. Covenant Belonging“Covenant belonging is to make and keep solemn promises to God and each other through sacred ordinances that invite the power of godliness to be manifest in our lives. When we covenant all we are, we can become more than we are. Covenant belonging gives us place, narrative, and capacity to become. It produces faith unto life and salvation.”
How does covenant belonging influence us?
How does covenant belonging influence how we act towards others?
Divine CovenantSource of Love for and From GodQUOTE 1: “Faith in Jesus Christ and personal change (repentance) bring mercy, grace, forgiveness. These comfort the hurt, loneliness, injustice we experience in mortality.”
QUOTE 2: “When we come to God’s great commandments to love Him and those around us by covenant, we do so not as stranger or guest but as His child at home.”
What is Elder Gong trying to tell us here?
QUOTE 3: “Along life’s path, we may lose faith in God, but He never loses faith in us. As it were, His porch light is always on. He invites us to come or return to the covenants that mark His path. He waits ready to embrace us, even when we are “yet a great way off.” When we look with an eye of faith for the patterns, arc, or connected dots of our experience, we can see His tender mercies and encouragement, especially in our trials, sorrows, and challenges, as well as in our joys. However often we stumble or fall, if we keep moving toward Him, He will help us, a step at a time.”
Partner Questions:
• Is there a time that you felt lost, but then felt God’s love for you?
• How does the analogy give us hope (for ourselves and for those we care about) that God’s “porchlight is always on” help us?
ActionsQUOTE 4: “When Sister Gong and I were falling in love toward marriage, I learned about agency and decisions. For a period of time, we were in school studying in two different countries on two different continents. It is why I can honestly say I earned a PhD in international relations. When I asked, “Heavenly Father, should I marry Susan?” I felt peace. But it was when I learned to pray with real intent, “Heavenly Father, I love Susan and want to marry her. I promise I will be the best husband and father I can be.” — when I acted and made my best decisions, it was then the strongest spiritual confirmations came.”
What is the difference between the 2 prayers, and why does it matter?
Centers in Jesus ChristQUOTE 5: “Covenant belonging centers in Jesus Christ as “mediator of the new covenant.” All things can work together for our good when we are “sanctified in Christ … in the covenant of the Father.” Every good and promised blessing comes to those who remain faithful to the end. The “happy state of those that keep the commandments of God” is to be “blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual,” and to “dwell with God in … never-ending happiness.”
QUOTE 6: “How Firm a Foundation” Verses 2 & 3
Fear not, I am with thee; oh be not dismayed
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand
When through the deep waters I call thee to go
The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress
Family/GenerationsQUOTE: “Now our Gong and Lindsay FamilySearch family trees, stories, and photos help us discover and connect through the lived experience of generational covenant belonging.”
Partner Work: How are you connecting your family? Does anything come to mind to change/enhance the way you are connecting with and in your family?
Other Sources- Book of Mormon
- Priesthood
Conclusion – LoveQUOTE: “In other words, sisters, it will not matter if we sat in the comfy seats or if we struggled to get through the meeting on a rusty folding chair in the back row. It won’t even matter if we, of necessity, stepped into a foyer to comfort a crying baby. What will matter is that we came with a desire to serve, that we noticed those to whom we minister and greeted them joyfully, and that we introduced ourselves to those sharing our row of folding chairs—reaching out with friendship even though we aren’t assigned to minister to them. And it will certainly matter that we do all that we do with the special ingredient of service coupled with love and sacrifice.”
– Sister Cristina B. Franco, “The Joy of Unselfish Service”
I usually do an internal eye roll every time I here the phrase covenant path. “Covenant Belonging” was just different enough for me to become interested. I like that we can belong to a community, something greater than ourselves. We can belong to a family – a heritage – a legacy. We can belong to our HF and our Redeemer JC.
All of those things can intertwine together to provide support and scaffolding for a life well lived, a life of connectedness and belonging.
I am with you on the eye-rolling. I feel that this talk resonated with me because it is a take on contractualism ethics – through covenant, we are required to tend to everyone because everyone belongs. When we are baptized, we covenant to care for others – even if they don’t return the favor. The bottom line is that we are responsible for our conduct towards others and how we reach out to each other. What that looks like will be different for everyone, but the principle is there.
But it also spoke to me as an approachable invitation to connect with God – at any level. Even though I tend to have a more hands-off impression of God, I can hope for that type of greeting and compassion.
I also made it a point when talking about covenants and promises that we make to each other to go beyond husband and wife, parent and children – that we make promises to other family members and close friends. A lot of my sisters are single – through divorce, death, or just never finding the person they wanted to marry.
I love it! Another church that I sometimes visit has revamped their church marketing subtitle to “a place to belong”. Their market research indicated that people were yearning for acceptance and belonging. I imagine this to be a common need. Roy wrote:
I love it! Another church that I sometimes visit has revamped their church marketing subtitle to “a place to belong”. Their market research indicated that people were yearning for acceptance and belonging. I imagine this to be a common need.
Not to derail, and perhaps this is a topic for its own thread, but I agree. I think that desire for community/village/belonging exists even among Millennials and Gen. Z. I think this is one of the biggest challenges for TCoJCoLDS at the moment. Yes, there are many who find this sense of belonging and acceptance but there are also many who don’t and for a variety of reasons including but not limited to LGBTQ+ issues, those like us who are maybe not as orthodox or have questions/doubts, and those who feel “unworthy” either because they are being judged by others (actual or perceived) or they’re being too hard on themselves. There is an “everyone welcome” church near my home, and it is very clear everyone is welcome and they market themselves that way. Conversely, I think the church gives some lip service to everyone welcome but it’s not reality. I haven’t mentioned this before, but it perturbed me at the time. Our last stake conference had a GA Seventy who did a Q&A session. One question had something to do with welcoming others who may believe or look differently and as I recall had sort of an LGBTQ+ leaning to it (although the questions were all softball and maybe that was only the way I heard it). Anyway, the answer was yes, everyone is welcome as they are – but they can’t stay that way, they have to change (and I think he actually said improve). I’m going to end on that note because now I’ve managed to triggered those feelings again – but I think you get where I was going.
To me, the basis of belonging can be summed up as “what is important to me is also important to you”. Our church (but probably churches in general) struggles because there is a wide generational gap – where what is important to our leaders isn’t always important to younger members AND/OR the specific applications aren’t as helpful. It doesn’t help that the narrative defining the perceptions of the younger generations does not match the narrative defining the perceptions of the older generations. The leadership has made impactful administrative changes to reconnect and signal that they are listening – but I think that there have become a lot of church/community substitutes that fundamentally replace church and/or community to a higher degree than past generations. I think that understanding that a person is likely to change for the better if they join a congregation is not unreasonable – but independent me is more likely to ask “how can we help you change to become the person you want to become” rather then “here is what you need to be”. I also recognize that we need this more settler mindset of how to get others to fit in easier to build something rather then the explorer mindset at times.
Thank you for sharing this. As always, I absolutely love the way you teach different views within a solidly faithful structure.
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