UNOH Covenant
1. Preamble
A covenant is a sacred agreement between a group people before God; a commitment to seek God’s help together. Covenants have been used from Old Testament times to early Christian assemblies, to successive waves of committed Christian communities, to marriages in helping join diverse people together. This particular covenant aims to find a common place for the diverse gifts, personalities and experiences of UNOH workers to stand together and move forward in the same direction. It does this by outlining the UNOH community’s core convictions and commitments. We draw upon these as a basis for our common vocation together as disciples of Jesus among the poor.
We do not enter into this covenant because we are strong, but because we are weak. Each UNOH worker needs to share, offer and receive gifts God gives us as community. Joined together in this common life, we ask for God’s grace to fulfill our common mission together. We enter this covenant because we have a profound sense that by ourselves ‘we can do nothing’. This covenant then helps us in the battle against the world, the flesh and devil that opposes poor communities being transformed through Christ.
This is not a covenant to be entered into lightly. It invites each of us to live out the Gospel in radical, sustainable and prophetic ways together. In an individualistic, consumer-driven age, we know this act of covenanting together is counter-cultural. Yet as a kind of reference point this covenant helps us stay true to why God brought us into being and helps fulfill the destiny God has for us. Such an invitation is worth going against public opinion for.
Not every Christian should make this particular covenant. God gifts each community differently. Indeed, for those not called by God to join UNOH, the convictions and commitment of this covenant would be an imposition. However, for those gifted for a vocation with UNOH, this covenant is experienced as a grace, enabling us to walk more closely as God intends us to live, despite the often difficult places we find ourselves.
Not only does this covenant help us find ways forward in dark or confusing times, but it also helps us when new opportunities for service arise. UNOH workers could go many different directions in a world full of violence, poverty and misery. Like a compass, our covenant helps to check our common direction and helps us to decide what not to do as well as what to do. It helps us be true to the special community God is making UNOH to be.
UNOH’s core convictions and commitments are a constant. God has shaped UNOH’s past to inform our current and future community mission. This covenant then is part of the process UNOH workers use to detect rather than invent our common mission in life. How then we apply, understand and methodise these convictions and commitments should keep changing. To help this process, UNOH’s current policy and procedural matters, as well as goals and interpretative discussions, have been placed as appendices after the covenant proper. UNOH workers also make personal covenants to each other at the start of each year.
The UNOH community would be less if we did not make this covenantal journey together. We may not always keep the spirit and letter of it, but by naming explicitly UNOH’s common convictions and commitments and asking for God’s help in fulfilling them, we have a better opportunity to keep returning to the path God has called us to walk together. In short, this covenant outlines the kind of community we believe Jesus invites UNOH to become. We invite you to prayerfully consider making this covenant and joining with us. There is much to be and do together.
2. Covenant proper
As Urban Neighbours Of Hope we covenant with God and each other to:
- Live out our passion for loving God and neighbour
- Focus on releasing neighbourhoods from urban poverty
- Grow through equipping each other, neighbours and the broader church to radically follow Jesus and join God’s Kingdom coming.
To be true to these commitments we share the following common commitments and practices.
A. Loving obedience
Lifestyle commitment: To discern the will and heart-beat of our Lord together and respond faithfully
Personal practice: Have I met God afresh in my Sabbath day, common devotionals and mentoring this month and followed through on any challenges that emerged?
Communal practice: Have we met God afresh in our daily communion times and life together and followed through on any challenges that emerged?
B. Missional service
Lifestyle commitment: To seek God’s Kingdom come through sharing Jesus in word, deed and sign
Personal practice: Have I spent at least a third of each work-day and week-end seeking to free my neighbours and neighbourhood from urban poverty?
Communal practice: Have we invited and supported neighbourhood-based discipleship and worship?
C. Voluntary poverty
Lifestyle commitment: To share our lives and resources in solidarity with those facing poverty and injustice
Personal practice: Have I limited my own freedom to seek my neighbour’s freedom from poverty?
Communal practice: Have we found and invited Jesus as disguised among ‘the least of these’ into our lives and open homes?
D. Prophetic advocacy
Lifestyle commitment: To help the broader Body of Christ to take God’s special concern for the poor as seriously as Jesus does
Personal practice: Have I discerned and shared what I’ve been learning and needing from God with the broader Body of Christ?
Communal practice: Have we invited, informed and inspired the broader Body of Christ to more radical responses to Jesus among the poor?
On the first Friday of each month we meet as a chapter to:
- Evaluate how we fulfilled these common commitments and practices
- Plan how we can go deeper and wider in these common commitments and practices.
3. For use in making this covenant public in meetings
The following statements are to be used as a way of making a public each UNOH worker’s commitment to this covenant. It is a summary of the key points of UNOH covenant that are to be publicly and prayerfully spoken and signed.
A) Having been through a discernment process and invited to join the UNOH community, will you uphold the spirit and practice of the UNOH covenant by the grace of God?
“ I will ( )
B) With God’s grace will you seek ‘To raise-up followers of Jesus who can help release neighbourhoods facing urban poverty in the Asian-Pacific cities?’
“ I will ( )
C) With God’s grace will you help UNOH to be a great at ‘Loving God and neighbours so much that the urban neighbourhoods we live in become like villages centred on Christ’?
“ I will ( )
D) With God’s grace will you seek to:
- Discern the will and heartbeat of our Lord together and respond faithfully
- Share your life and resources in solidarity with those facing poverty
- Advance the Reign of God by sharing Jesus in word, deed and sign
- Help the broader Body of Christ to take God’s special concern for the poor as seriously as Jesus does?
“ I will ( )
E) With God’s grace will you share in a common ‘rhythm of life’ with the other UNOH workers in your chapter?
“ I will ( )
F) With God’s grace will you do whatever it takes to see the Kingdom of God come in the neighbourhood Christ has given you to serve?
“ I will ( )
Having made these commitments, the broader UNOH community makes the following commitment to each UNOH worker by the grace of God:
- To know those who lead me, what they believe and what their vision is
- To never be left in isolation
- To be heard
- To be trusted
- To be provided the context for growth
- To be held accountable
- To be the object of grace
May all those who take up this covenant hear Jesus’ words at the end of their lives: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’
UNOH worker ………………………………………..
Chapter leader ………………………………………
Director ……………………………………………….