Sunday 6th and Sunday 13th September 2026 will be Renew Sundays for all of Christ City Church. We do these every year. This blog will give some context as to what we’re going to do and why, so that you can be praying and preparing yourself in advance for this time of personal and corporate renewal.
Why is personal and corporate renewal necessary?
Throughout the scriptures and in church history God’s people have often set aside time for personal and corporate renewal. One could argue that all of the prophets are doing ‘covenant renewal’ – drawing people back to God and his purposes. Here are a very key examples of covenant renewal in the Bible:
- Moses: led the people in covenant renewal before he died and they moved forward towards the promised land – “All of you are standing today in the presence of the Lord your God… You are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the Lord your God… to confirm you this day as his people’ (Deuteronomy 29:9-14)
- Joshua: called the people to choose whom they would serve and wholeheartedly commit to the Lord – “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods… But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.’ (Joshua 24:15)
- David: famously had to commit to personal spiritual renewal after his downfall- “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” (Psalm 51:10 & 12)
- Nehemiah: heroically rebuilt the city walls in 52 days in the 5th Century BC (ch 1-6); but then realised that the bigger issue was not the disrepair of the city walls, but the disrepair of the people’s hearts, which took far longer than 52 days to deal with (ch7-13). Nehemiah was the book we used when we first started Renew in CCC – back in 2022 after Covid-19, where we reflected on the themes of re-envisioning, repentance, recommitment, and rejoicing seen in Nehemiah’s renewal.
Jesus and Covenant renewal
Jesus once said to his disciples Matthew 5:13:
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?”
It’s easy to lose our saltiness as Christians – our distinctiveness, our flavour, our decay-preventing and taste-enhancing nature. We need a ‘fresh touch’ from God to continue to be the people he has called us to be.
He also said to the church in Ephesus – Revelation 2:4-5
“Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”
It’s easy to lose our ‘first love’ – we need to be called back to our initial, sweet and tender devotion to Jesus.
Communion – 6th and 13th September
The way we’ll participate in Renew on Sunday 6th and Sunday 13th September is through communion – coming forward to take the bread and the wine at the end of the service. Why is communion, or the Lord’s Supper, so helpful in doing this? Tim Chester, in his book Truth You Can Touch, puts it like this:
“Every Lord’s Supper is a covenant-renewal ceremony… but it might be helpful to have an annual communion service in which covenant renewal is the main focus, a chance to recommit to be members of the church.
We remember our covenant commitments, not just recalling that they exist but recommitting ourselves to those commitments.”
Pg123-124, A Truth We Can Touch – how baptism and communion shape our lives
The covenant we enter into is with Jesus, by his grace and in his blood (Luke 22:20); and so we first give our allegiance and commitment to him. As we do that, we are reminded that we do not do this as individuals but together – as one body, one family and one people. So as an overflow of our recommitment to him, we respond to his call to love one another as he has loved us, and to share his message with a lost world. At Renew, we want to take time do this well and thoughtfully, to strengthen our ties to our Lord, to his family and to his mission, and to rejoice in his goodness to us.
Our commitments
As we prayerfully prepare for the Renew Sundays, Chester gives us helpful examples of what we’re committing to. He continues:
“Think what commitment to Christ involves:
- A radical repudiation of sin, selfishness, self-reliance and pride
- A commitment to look to Christ, and Christ alone, for salvation from sin and death
- A commitment to find our ultimate identity and fulfilment in Christ
- A commitment to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him
- A commitment to obey his every command
- A commitment to extend his reign through the proclamation of the gospel
And think too, what commitment to Christ’s people involves:
- A commitment to attend regularly
- A commitment to pray faithfully
- A commitment to serve fully
- A commitment to give sacrificially
- A commitment to participate in the church’s mission
- A commitment to disciple others, to be discipled, and (if necessary) to be disciplined
It is not something to be done lightly. There should be a weight to what takes place. These are the commitments we make to Christ, and these are the commitments we make to one another.”
Pg123-124, A Truth We Can Touch – how baptism and communion shape our lives
As we approach these two Sundays please consider these commitments to Christ and his church, and please use the time of communion to commit yourself to these things.
Only by grace and only by the Spirit
The bread and the wine remind us powerfully that we only make all commitments because of God’s grace. These commitments only arise because we have first understood what it means to be forgiven and adopted into God’s family by God’s grace through the cross. At the cross we remember the compassion of God to forgive us again and again; we are given the opportunity for a fresh start. Let’s use the Renew Sundays to take that opportunity together. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).
We not only need grace to recommit to God, we need His Holy Spirit – as David prayed, to renew us (Psalm 51:10-12). We need God’s enabling so let’s use the Renew Sundays to ask for God’s power to be at work in us. Paul summarised it well in Philippians 2:12-13 – we ‘work out’ our salvation, as God ‘works in’ our lives.
“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose.”
Here is a video from our first Renew back in 2022, which gives a simple overview.