What does membership look like at James Street Mennonite Church?
At JSMC, we don’t have any classes or requirements you have to fulfill in order to be a member – if you are actively participating in congregational life and consider us to be your church family, we consider you a member and a part of our community of faith!
In lieu of formal membership, each year we engage in what we call covenanting. Over the course of a few Sundays, we revisit our mission, vision, and values and speak to what we believe God is calling us to in the year ahead. We then invite each person to enter into a covenant relationship with this community of faith, envisioning how they might participate in congregational life and ministry in the year ahead. Each member is an important part of living out our mission, vision, and values, and we have all been given different gifts and passions with which to serve Christ and the world. We are all invited to respond based on how and where the Spirit is nudging us to actively engage in worship, community, and mission.
This year, our covenanting theme is “Rooted to Grow…and Change…and Fly.” We have reflected on the foundation of our mission, vision, and values and who we have been as a community of faith – how these things can root our faith as we encounter a continually changing world. We are also seeking how this faith foundation can allow us to be open to the growth that God is cultivating in our lives, and the new and changing ways of being community or doing ministry that God may be calling us to, in order to participate in the change that God is working in the world. We like the images of plants with roots reaching down into the soil, and butterflies being transformed to soar into who they were created to be. We invite you to join us in this journey!
If you haven’t signed a butterfly yet, in the alcove outside of the sanctuary, you are welcome to take an unsigned butterfly from the basket on a stand to the left, sign it, and place it in the basket on the floor to the right, as a sign of your covenanting with God and our JSMC community!
See the document below for more information about covenanting at JSMC and to make your own personal commitments for 2023.
