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November 2000, Page 8.
Index of articles.
Questions:
index,
Jerusalem,
Spilled wine,
Multifaith,
Why marry,
Christenings,
Mission giving.
Christenings etc:
index,
Thanksgivings,
Confirmation.
In this issue:
(November 2000)
Vicar's Letter,
Welcome Marise,
Vision,
Question.
In our "Questions to the clergy" slot, John will try to answer any query you throw at him, without hesitation, deviation or repetition...
Thanksgiving and Blessing for the gift of a child
Q. Why do you have a service of “Thanksgiving and Blessing” instead of a Christening at the church at Eccleshill?
A. The service of Thanksgiving and Blessing has come to be used in the church nowadays for two reasons: first, it expresses what most parents want to say to God after the birth of their children, and second, it is what Jesus did when children were brought to him. Let me begin from the other end:
Baptism, the service which used to be used for most babies who were brought to the Church of England, is basically a service about making promises to God. The parents and godparents make statements about their own faith in Jesus, they promise to bring up the child “within the family of the church” and to teach him/her about Jesus and set them the example of churchgoing themselves, and they promise that when the child comes of age, he/she will want to be a committed Christian believer.
Our generation is more honest than many in the past, and most parents can see a big problem with these promises. They may want to bring their children up in the best way possible, but they recognise that their children have a right to choose for themselves their own religious faiths, and they do not want to make a promise to God which they can’t fulfil. There are some parents who are quite open about the fact that they do not really want to come to church week by week, and there are also some parents (and I’m one) who want to save the experience of baptism so that their children will in due course be able to express their own faith by being baptized on their own request. After all, when you look at baptism in the bible, you find it is really about adults making their own statement of faith in Jesus, and being baptized for themselves.
Thanksgiving and Blessing is based on what Jesus did when little children were brought to him (there is no record of babies being baptized in the bible). Mark 10:13-16 tells us that although the disciples tried to stop parents bringing their little children to Jesus, Jesus himself said that children were precious to God, he used them to teach adults about how to enter God’s kingdom, and “he took the children in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” The service is not one of promises - instead it has two simple messages: (i) thank you God for this baby, and (ii) please help (“bless”) him/her now and in the coming years.
Both services are real Christenings (“Christen” means “bring to Christ”). But I think that the Thanksgiving and Blessing follows Jesus’ example more closely.
John Hartley