What Churches Expect from Members
A fter listing four expectations their church has of their members, Steve Stroope, the lead pastor at Lake Pointe Baptist Church in Rockwell, Texas, states, “Every church you would ever join expects these things of you. The difference is that they just won’t tell you. We let you know up front what is expected. The only difference is communication, not expectation.” As I think about it, before I was baptized, I stood before the small church I was joining and we read through the Church Covenant. I was eight years old at the time, just old enough to grasp most of the concepts. Before I was permitted to join the church, I was asked to agree to that covenant. The next church I joined didn’t have a copy of the Church Covenant hanging on the wall. Some of the church members had never seen it and it even surprised one of the men the church ordained as a deacon, shortly after I became a member. But whether a church has the Church Covenant on display or not, every church has expectations of thei...