Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, 2007

into the family of God in this local church. Then, the pertinent question to the members present, ‘Do you promise to love, encourage, strengthen, guide, pray for, and care for’ the candidate as they join the fellowship? 1 ’ The covenant concept clearly continues to underline the horizontal responsibilities that members, committed to one another, have towards each other. Two contemporary Baptist writers continue to suggest a similar mutual commitment and even a covenant understanding of the church. It is to these attempts at contemporary ecclesiology that we now briefly turn. In his useful volume, Radical Believers: The Baptist Way of Being the Church, Paul Beasley-Murray writes of the church as ‘a believers’ church’, giving importance to intentionality following conversion, faith and baptism. 14 He speaks of a reciprocal commitment between (in the first place) ourselves and God - a commitment which is ‘a life-long commitment to the way of Christ’. 15 There follows from this primary commitment, a commitment (in the second place) to the people of Christ: It means, for instance, that we may no longer look only to our own interests, but also to the interests of others (Phil 2:4). It means that sharing with God’s people who are in need and practising hospitality (Rom 12:13) come to the top of our agenda. 16 Later, he says that, ‘Commitment to Christ, therefore, inevitably involves 17 commitment to his people and church membership’. Beasley-Murray is adamant that we look at church with a covenant- focus. This whole matter of church membership, he asserts, is about covenant, ‘First and foremost church membership is about covenant relationships’, 18 indeed, ‘commitment to one another ... is the essence of a church covenant’. 19 In fellowship groups (which for Beasley-Murray 12 Patterns and Prayers for Christian Worship. A Guidebook for Worship Leaders (Oxford: OUP, 1991), p. 104. 13 Ibid., p. 106. 14 P. Beasley-Murray, Radical Believers. The Baptist Way of Being the Church (Didcot: Baptist Union of Great Britain, 1992), p. 9. 15 Ibid., pp. 15, 21, respectively. 16 Ibid., p. 21. 17 Ibid., p. 50 - emphasis added. See also, pp. 49, 54. 18 Ibid., p. 49. 19 Ibid., p. 55. Interestingly, Beasley-Murray writes this in the context of looking at the covenant made by John Smyth and his followers at Gainsborough in 1606. 10 Journal of European Baptist Studies epitomise believers’ church) the dynamic of relationships (or ‘meaningful fellowship’) means that ‘love can be displayed, life can be shared, maturity can be developed, gifts can be discovered’. 20 Later, in his chapter on ‘Living the Lordship of Christ’, he speaks of an outward, missional movement from covenant relationships to the world: ‘In our relationship with others we are called to represent Christ to one another and the world ’. 21 We need to return to this important idea below. More recently, the present Principal of Spurgeon’s Ba