An Evaluative History of Covenant Ministries International and its offshoots from 1995 to the present day

Abstract

This paper is an evaluative history of Covenant Ministries International (CMI) and its offshoots from about 1995 to the present day. To the author's knowledge, no-one has attempted such a history of this group, over this period of time.Walker famously denoted CMI as Restoration 1 (R1), along with groups such as New Frontiers who followed more faithfully the line of teaching propounded by Arthur Wallis and Bryn Jones.2 A Walker Restoring the Kingdom (Guildford: Eagle, 1998), pp. 41-42 CMI – once called Harvestime – was headed up by Bryn Jones, who died in 2003. It may well be true, as Hewitt stated, that ‘along with Arthur Wallis, he (Bryn Jones) has been the single most influential architect of Restorationism in Britain’.3 B. Hewitt Doing a New Thing (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995), p.34 Leaving aside CMI which in its heyday in the late 1980s represented 65 to 70 churches,4 A.Scotland, interview with the author, Rugby: 19/3/06 other groups were spawned from Harvestime/CMI, such as New Frontiers and the Cornerstone Network.This paper is part of a longer, MTh thesis submitted to Regents College in June 2006, which also set out to evaluate the validity of apostolic ministry in today's church. Space will not allow that debate to be included in this paper, although how the leaders within CMI interpreted and applied what the Bible says about apostolic accountability and authority, affected why CMI fragmented, so this will be discussed. The paper will seek to show that CMI was a worthy experiment or attempt to return to a biblical model of church government, which initially appeared to succeed, but which latterly floundered due to human factors. It will also be argued that this significant Restorationist group did make a positive contribution to the UK church scene.