What’s a Covenant Group?

Covenant groups, also known as small group ministry, comprise 8-12 people who covenant to meet regularly over several months in order to build relationships, grow spiritually, and provide service to the congregation and community. The covenant provides a framework for the organization of the group: how members will interact with one another, what the commitment means, and the basic logistics of meetings.

Why a Covenant?

A covenant group should provide a safe space for listening and sharing. Having a written, agreed-upon covenant—meaning general guidelines for how the group will work—is a great way to ensure that your group time is spent having healthy, meaningful experiences and not arguing over process.

The scope and specificity of the covenant will vary from group. Below is a set of questions that I think any covenant should answer. For most of them, I’ve also included the reason for the questions, and what my own group came up with. I offer my experience as a model, but it’s important for each group to come to it’s own decisions.

Theme

Some covenant groups have specific monthly themes, or membership or identity characteristics; such as poetry, women, young feminists, young adults, men, or diversity. Others are simply about building relationships, and
have no separate theme. Even if you have a very broad mission, having everyone agree to it will probably help your group to coalesce and not constantly revisit its purpose.

In my men’s covenant group, we originally thought we would spend a significant amount of time developing a mission statement. However, after a few meetings and covenanting on other issues, we decided that the purpose of our group was simply to talk about issues particular to us as men and learn from each other. That has proven sufficient.

Questions the Covenant Should Answer

1. How will we be together?
2. Where will we meet?
3. How often will we meet?
4. For how many months will we meet?
5. When will we stop accepting new members?
6. How many meeting can one miss and still be a member?
7. When is too late to come to a meeting?
8. What level of privacy/confidentiality should we
   have?
9. How will our group be led?

1. How Will We Be Together?

In order to create and maintain positive relationships in the group, it is important to have a common understanding of what is appropriate for sharing and how members react to what others have said. For example, discussing church politics or other members of the church is not appropriate. In my group we felt that there was sufficient understanding of what topics were not appropriate, so our covenant focused on how we would interact.

We decided on the following:

2. Where Will We Meet?

Some groups meet at the congregation; some meet in member’s homes. Do whatever works for your group. The church is nice neutral ground, and everyone knows where it is, but other activities taking place there may be disruptive. If you meet at someone’s home, make sure it’s geographically accessible and welcoming for all. If someone or their place would be an inappropriate host (i.e., someone who is high maintenance or a problematic person in the group), be prepared with alternate plans when they offer.

3. How Often Will We Meet?

Most groups meet either once or twice per month. In designing your schedule, try to find a balance between the needs of people not to over-schedule and over-commit themselves and the needs of the group to have members who have made a serious commitment and to meet regularly enough to build on previous meetings’ work.

4. For How many Months Will We Meet?

It’s important that folks know what they’re getting into. Again, it’s good to find a balance in the group: members need to be able to make a commitment to the group, but no one should feel as if they’re stuck in a group forever. My group, which started meeting in May, decided on the following:

5. When Will We Stop Accepting New Members?

New members require that the group essentially start over, or at least move back a step or two so as to make the new person feel fully included. The longer you do this, the more your risk frustrating the older members and preventing the
group for really gelling. Set up a reasonable timetable for closing the group.

My group decided:

6. How Many Meetings Can One Miss and Still Be a Member?

For the same reason it’s important to stop accepting new members, you may also want to decide how many meetings someone can miss.

My group decided on the following:

7. When Is It Too Late To Come To a Meeting?

My group wanted to set a guideline for this to avoid being disrupted by latecomers. Once discussion gets going, it’s often hard on both the group and the latecomer for someone to join mid-stream.

We agreed on the following:

8. What Level of Privacy/Confidentiality Should We Have?

As you can imagine, the covenant group will bring up very personal and sensitive topics, some of which shouldn’t be shared outside the group. However, the experience is also intended to deepen individual’s relationship with each other outside the group, so it’s natural to want to continue certain conversations. Also, group members may want to continue discussing interesting topics—including sharing things others had said—with partners or friends. My group decided that it was fine to continue discussing topics and sharing things others had said so long as the sources were not revealed (by either name or context details). We made an effort to strike a balance between total confidentiality and relationship building between members outside of group.

(2024 Note: Today's groups tend to ask for a higher level of confidentiality than this example in order to build trust and enable deeper sharing.)

My group adopted the following:

9. How Will Our Group Be Led?

Some covenant groups have designated leaders responsible for programming at every session; others rotate some or all of the responsibility. The degree to which session leaders need to be specially chosen and trained (see the next section of this manual) depends in large part on the topic you’ve chosen and the stage of community building your group is at (see the last section of this manual). At minimum, I would suggest having members participate by doing opening and closings, and/or lighting the chalice. My own group rotates completely: 1-2 members agree to provide all of the programming. Ideally, the permanent group leaders would touch base with the meeting leaders to confirm that the programming was appropriate and that they would respect the structure and opening/closing rituals.

Beyond providing the focus reading, leaders are responsible for the overall dynamic of the group. In groups where the members have a good sense of appropriate topics and how to respectfully express themselves, the facilitation role will be minimal. However, if your group has members with poor judgment or social skills, the job will be much harder. Use the covenant to remind individuals of how they agreed to be. The covenant should make it easier to find the balance between the good of the group and being welcome to individuals who may not have many other options.