After a month of exploring the meaning of faithful stewardship, we celebrated Commitment Sunday this past Sunday, Oct. 29. We invited parishioners to renew their commitment to God and to this Covenant Community by registering their intention to be fully present with us.

How does one make public an intention? There are lots of ways. We used a Commitment Card.

Reviewing our Commitment Cards allow us to make a “faith audit” of our Covenant Community. The word “audit” comes from the Latin word, “to hear.” Listening to our parishioners speaking through their Commitment Cards we can assess the Response Ability of our parish.

Jesus calls us to be covenant partners with God in the work of salvation. Our ability to respond to this call depends on our capacity for faith. Commitment is always an expression of faith.

Our Commitment Card invited commitment in three areas.

First, we invited people to be intentional in worship. Not everyone is ready to embrace Sabbath Keeping as a spiritual discipline. (The heart of Sabbath Keeping involves making the weekly public worship of God in community the priority in one's calendar.)

We live in an age when the value of God and community is in retreat. Sabbath Keeping pushes against the flow of the culture. It requires effort, discipline, and a willingness to say “No” to competing alliances. It takes time to make personal and practical adjustments if one has not been formed by a Sabbath Keeping discipline.

We invited people to make a first step by becoming more intentional in worship.

Second, we invited people to be more intentional in supporting fellow parishioners. Our Shepherd Group ministry provides a convenient way to make this real.

We live in an age when individuals suffer from deep and profound isolation. A recent study revealed that “nearly a quarter of people surveyed said they had ‘zero’ close friends with whom to discuss personal matters. More than 50 percent named two or fewer confidants, most often immediate family members.” (Smith-Lovin and McPherson, American Sociological Review, http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/June06ASRFeature.pdf.)

This amounts to a crisis of personal support. Human beings suffer harm when they live in social isolation. I'm convinced that the vast majority of social problems we face would evaporate if people would simply learn how to support one another.

This is not just of sociological issue. On the night Jesus was crucified, he focused his disciples on one challenge: “Love one another,” he said.

But, people do live isolated lives. Once a person adjusts to loneliness, the thought of sharing one's life with others can feel terrifying. Our Commitment Card invited people to pray daily for their fellow parishioners, as a first step to providing support to others, if joining a Shepherd Group represented too big a challenge.

The third invitation was to become more intentional in their financial commitment to our Covenant Community. The tithe is, of course, the biblical standard of faithful giving. But we recognize how challenging this is for people who have not already developed this spiritual discipline.

We challenged people to take a step in the direction of the tithe by making an intentional choice to be mindful of their financial offering to the Lord.

Over the next several weeks I will make public in this forum the “faith audit” of our parish. We will listen to what our prishioners have to tell us about their faith through their Commitment Cards.

Of course I will not make public individual commitments. Individual commitments are of interest as a matter of spiritual direction, which is a deeply personal matter.

Of interest to the parish is what our “faith audit” reveals about our Covenant Community as a whole. What do our Commitment Cards tell about our Response Ability? Our ability to live as covenant partners with God in the salvation of the world?