Core Doctrine into Action
Signs of the Covenant
Interview with Will Bourne
The conversation begins near water and a shared table. These practices can carry joy, memory, belonging, disagreement, and sometimes pain. They are familiar to the Church, yet familiarity can hide how deeply they speak about Christ and how carefully they should be received.
Will Bourne approaches baptism and Communion with conviction and humility. The exchange follows their biblical story, centers them in the death and resurrection of Jesus, honors historic differences, and asks how welcome, examination, authority, accessibility, safeguarding, and shared life can remain faithful to the grace they signify.
What is the central message of Signs of the Covenant?
The central message is that baptism and Communion are gifts through which the Church receives, remembers, and embodies the gospel. They do not replace Christ, and they are not religious performances by which we control grace. They point us to what God has done in Jesus, gather us into a people, and train us to live as people of covenant. Baptism speaks of union with Christ, cleansing, death and resurrection, belonging, and a new allegiance. Communion brings us again to Christ’s self-giving body and blood, the new covenant, shared dependence, and promised return. The book asks the Church to recover these practices with biblical depth, pastoral care, accountable leadership, and humility toward traditions that do not explain every detail in the same way.
Why did you choose the title Signs of the Covenant?
I chose the title because a sign directs attention beyond itself while truly participating in the life it signifies. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper direct us to God’s covenant faithfulness fulfilled in Christ. They make visible the promises we confess, the people we are becoming, and the grace on which we depend. Calling them signs does not mean they are empty symbols. It means their meaning comes from God’s action and promise, not from the water, bread, cup, minister, or congregation considered in isolation. The title also reminds us that covenant is relational. These practices belong within worship, discipleship, accountability, memory, hope, and a shared life beneath the lordship of Jesus.
Why use both the words sacrament and ordinance?
I use both because Christian traditions are often protecting important truths through different vocabulary. Ordinance emphasizes that Christ commanded these practices and that the Church obeys Him in carrying them out. Sacrament emphasizes that God uses visible, embodied means to testify to grace and nourish faith. The words can carry different doctrinal commitments, so I do not collapse them into a false agreement. Yet both can help us resist a shallow account. Baptism and Communion are neither private inventions nor decorative customs. They are received practices governed by Scripture, centered on Christ, and entrusted to the Church. Naming both terms also signals that the conversation should begin with careful listening rather than using vocabulary as a quick test of someone’s faithfulness.
Where do baptism and Communion begin in the biblical story?
They stand within the long biblical story of creation, covenant, deliverance, judgment, promise, and new creation. Water carries memories of creation, the flood, the Red Sea, cleansing, the Jordan, and prophetic hope. Bread and cup carry memories of God’s provision, Passover, covenant meals, sacrifice, thanksgiving, and promised banquet. Yet Christians do not merely collect these images. Jesus gathers and fulfills them. He enters the waters, gives Himself for the world, commands baptism in the triune name, identifies the bread and cup with His self-giving, and promises to be with His people. The signs receive their Christian meaning from His death, resurrection, lordship, and coming Kingdom. They belong to the whole story, but Christ remains their interpretive center.
Why must Jesus remain the center of sacramental practice?
Without Jesus, sacramental practice can become fascination with ritual, institutional authority, personal experience, or denominational correctness. Jesus keeps the signs ordered toward the gospel. Baptism joins our confession to His death and resurrection. Communion announces His self-giving love, the new covenant in His blood, His risen presence, and His promised return. His character also governs how the practices are administered. The One who welcomes, tells the truth, washes feet, protects the vulnerable, confronts hypocrisy, and gives Himself freely does not authorize ministers to use holy things as tools of intimidation. Christ is not merely the subject named in the liturgy. He is Lord over the community, the minister, the method, the boundaries, and the fruit.
What does baptism reveal about the death and resurrection of Jesus?
Baptism declares that Christian life begins in participation, not self-improvement. Paul speaks of being baptized into Christ’s death and raised to walk in newness of life. The water confronts the old life’s claim to rule and announces a new allegiance to the risen Lord. That does not mean the baptized person becomes incapable of sin or suffering. It means identity and hope have been relocated in Christ. Baptism therefore joins assurance to discipleship. We remember grace, and we also renounce patterns that contradict the life we have received. The Church should never use this language to deny the complexity of trauma, addiction, illness, or gradual healing. New life is real, but formation still requires truth, community, repentance, treatment when needed, patience, and hope.
What does Communion reveal about the cross?
Communion brings the Church repeatedly to the self-giving of Jesus. The bread and cup do not celebrate our strength. They testify that we live because Christ gave Himself. The Table therefore judges pride, domination, contempt, and exclusion that deny the body we proclaim. Paul’s warning to Corinth shows that sacramental speech cannot be separated from how the community treats vulnerable members. To discern the body includes receiving the gift of Christ and recognizing the people for whom He gave Himself. The cross also prevents leaders from demanding sacrificial loyalty while protecting themselves from accountability. Jesus freely gives His life. No minister may use the language of sacrifice to require another person to remain in abuse, conceal wrongdoing, or surrender needed care.
What is Christian baptism?
Christian baptism is the Church’s water-marked confession of God’s saving action in Jesus Christ and our belonging to Him. The New Testament gathers many meanings around it: cleansing, forgiveness, union with Christ, death and resurrection, reception into a people, appeal to God, gift of the Spirit, and public allegiance. No single image should erase the others. Baptism is personal, but never merely private. A person is baptized into Christ and into a community responsible for teaching, care, discipline, and shared witness. The Church should therefore prepare people thoughtfully, explain what is being confessed, and refuse to treat numbers or emotional momentum as the measure of faithfulness. The sign is joyful, serious, embodied, and covenantal.
What is happening when the Church celebrates Communion?
The Church obeys Jesus, gives thanks, remembers His self-giving, receives the bread and cup, proclaims His death, discerns His body, shares one table, and looks toward His return. Traditions differ on how Christ is present and how the elements relate to His body and blood. I do not flatten those claims. I do insist that Communion is more than an individual thought exercise. It is a corporate act in which Christ’s people receive again the truth that life is gift. The Table exposes self-sufficiency and calls divided people toward repentance and peace. It also carries eschatological hope. We eat a small meal that points toward the feast of the Kingdom and the healing of creation.
How should Christians understand Christ’s presence at the Table?
They should begin with Christ’s promise rather than with contempt for another tradition. Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal, and other communities use different theological accounts. Some emphasize a substantial change, some sacramental union, some spiritual presence, and some memorial participation. These are real differences. Yet Christians should ask what each tradition is trying to protect: the objectivity of grace, the reality of Christ’s gift, the work of the Spirit, the sufficiency of the once-for-all sacrifice, or the necessity of faith. My own emphasis is that the risen Christ is not absent from His people, while no formula gives ministers control over Him. The Table should deepen worship, faith, unity, repentance, and love.
Who should be welcomed to the Table?
Churches answer that question differently because they connect the Table to baptism, membership, confirmation, confession, discipline, and ecclesial unity in different ways. An open Table emphasizes Christ’s hospitality and invitation. A guarded or closed Table emphasizes covenant accountability and visible communion. Each approach can be practiced faithfully or harmfully. Churches should state their practice clearly before distribution, explain the theological reason, and avoid singling people out publicly. Visitors need enough information to choose without humiliation. Children and vulnerable adults require thoughtful pastoral care. A boundary should never become a tool for personal retaliation, partisan exclusion, racial hierarchy, disability discrimination, or protection of leadership power.
What does it mean to examine oneself before Communion?
Self-examination means coming into the light of Christ with honesty, repentance, faith, and attention to the body. It is not a search for sinless worthiness. None of us earns a place at the Table. Paul’s warning concerns a community whose meal displayed division, humiliation, and disregard for poorer members. Examination is therefore personal and communal. Have I refused truth, protected harm, despised another member, or treated grace casually? What repair is mine to begin? At the same time, leaders should not use examination language to intensify obsessive guilt or spiritual terror. People experiencing scrupulosity, trauma, or severe anxiety may need gentle pastoral care and qualified mental-health support. The Table calls us to Christ, not to endless self-surveillance.
What does it mean to discern the body?
It means receiving Christ’s self-giving and recognizing the people His grace gathers. In Corinth, failure at the Table was visible in how members treated one another, especially those with less social power. Discernment therefore includes doctrine, worship, relationships, material practice, and institutional life. A church cannot confess one body while tolerating racial contempt, economic humiliation, disability exclusion, abuse, or protected classes of leadership. Nor does unity mean suppressing every disagreement. The body needs truthful speech, diverse gifts, correction, lament, and accountable care. Discernment asks whether our shared practice makes the character of Christ more visible and whether those most likely to be overlooked are being honored as indispensable members.
What is your final invitation to readers and listeners?
Come again to the signs with your eyes fixed on Jesus. Remember your baptism, or prepare for baptism with honesty and joy. Come to the Table hungry for grace, reconciliation, truth, and hope. Do not use holy practices to control conscience, protect authority, or rank believers. Honor the body in front of you. Make room for questions. Protect children and vulnerable adults. Seek medical, mental-health, legal, safeguarding, or emergency help when the situation requires it. Tell the truth about harm. Repair what can be repaired. Hold conviction with humility. The water, bread, and cup point beyond themselves to the faithful Christ. Receive His gift, remain in His body, and let covenant grace become visible in the life you live.
A Closing Invitation
The invitation is to receive baptism and Communion as visible practices centered in Christ, shaped by grace, and carried into accountable community. Let the signs deepen belonging without coercion, remembrance without nostalgia, and hope without denial. Faith in Action completes the movement by asking how a formed people bears truthful witness in the world.
Return to the book