What is a Covenant Church?

Community Covenant Church of Hopkinton is one of more than six hundred congregations making up the Evangelical Covenant Denomination in the United States and Canada. We are committed to sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with our world. We emphasize the Bible's witness to new life in Jesus Christ expressed through a daily walk in community with our Lord.

The "covenant" in our name refers to the "agreement" early Covenanters made to mutually support one another in the ways of Jesus Christ.

In the briefest of terms, an Evangelical Covenant Church can be described as:

What do we believe?

We affirm the centrality of the Word of God, the necessity of the new birth, the church as a fellowship of believers, a conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit, and the reality of freedom in Christ.

More information about the Evangelical Covenant Denomination can be found on their web site. A more detailed statement of Covenant affirmations of faith is also available there.

An excellent 15-minute video on the web which gives the basics of salvation can be found at JustStopAndThink.com.

Where did the Covenant Church originate?

The Covenant Church has its roots in historic Christianity as it emerged out of the Protestant Reformation, the biblical instruction of the Lutheran State Church of Sweden, and out of the spiritual awakenings of the nineteenth century.

About 125 years ago, a group of people perceived the Swedish Lutheran Church to have wandered from the importance of personal faith in Jesus Christ. This group, known as "Mission Friends", eventually broke from Lutheranism and became the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Due to the strong emphasis upon mission work, with early efforts aimed in Russia and the Congo, today there are more Covenanters in the Congo than in the United States. We presently have missionaries serving in thirteen additional countries including: Laos, Germany, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Spain, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand.

And yet, in our post-Christian world we recognize that our own country is now a mission field. In response, the Evangelical Covenant Denomination is presently either planting a new church or restarting an existing congregation in the United States at a rate of one per week.