I listened to a lively conversation today. A man who attends a Church of the Nazarene, but doesn’t consider himself a Nazarene, raised the matter of the “rules” of the Church of the Nazarene in issues such as drinking alcoholic beverages. He said that he doesn’t have any problem with having a beer, but that he has voluntarily stopped drinking because of a relationship he has with a young man who has an alcohol addiction. Someone pointed out that that was the source of the “rule” in the early days of the holiness movement. Because the early holiness folk were engaged in ministry to alcohol abusers, they abstained from that which was the downfall for their friends.

We sometimes hear the call to do away with the Covenant of Christian Conduct in the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene. After this discussion I wonder if the real issue here is that we no longer engage missionally in ways that help the Covenant statements make sense. We don’t see the rationale, for example, of the statement concerning total abstinence of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, or gambling because we are not sharing life with those struggling with addiction. The response to questions about the validity of a Covenant statement or lifestyle issue, then, would be missional engagement, not merely discussion or debate. Or maybe it needs to be missional engagement, then discussion.