Category: adoption and foster care

Baby Dedication Serivce – How do you do it?

On mother’s day our church will have a Baby Dedication Service. Many churches dedicate babies because of tradition rather than theology. We’re trying to change that. Pastor David Michael at Bethlehem Baptist Church has been a great in this. David and his wife Sally are behind the Children’s Desiring God curriculum. Their approach to infant dedications emphasizes parental promises and includes a mandatory parenting class. Here is what we are planning at our church:

  1. I’ve contacted families from our church that have added new children since last year.
  2. We’ve arranged a meeting several weeks before the dedication. We will use this as a teaching time to explain the dedication service and reinforce a biblical vision for parenting.
  3. At the dedication service the parents stand before the congregation with their children and are asked the following questions:
    • Do you today recognize these children as the gifts of God and give heartfelt thanks for God’s blessing?
    • Do you now dedicate your children to the Lord who gave them to you all, surrendering all worldly claims upon their lives in the hope that they will belong wholly to God?
    • Do you pledge as parents that, with God’s fatherly help, you will bring up your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, making every reasonable effort, with patience and love, to build the Word of God, the character of Christ and the joy of the Lord into their lives?
    • Do you promise to provide, through God’s blessing, for the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs of your children, looking to your own heavenly Father for the wisdom, love and strength to serve them and not use them?
    • Do you promise, God helping you, to make it your regular prayer that, by God’s grace, your children will come to trust in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins and for the fulfillment of all his promises to them, even eternal life; and in this faith follow Jesus as Lord and obey his teachings?
  4. The congregation will have these same promises as a bulletin insert. We want this time to reinforce a biblical vision of parenting for the whole congregation.
  5. After the parents have affirmed the promises the senior pastor will pray this prayer of dedication: (child’s name), together with your parents, who love you dearly, and this people who care about the outcome of your faith, I dedicate you to God, surrendering together with them all worldly claims upon your life, in the hope that you will belong wholly to God for ever .

We are careful to make this a time of commitment and prayer. I think the approach I’ve described removes the “sacramental” feel that accompanies infant baptism (which we cannot practice in clear conscience). What are your thoughts? Does your church have a similar process? Leave a comment and let me know. We are always eager to learn.

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What makes a civilization throw away children?

I just read this from Dr. Mohler’s blog:

Here is evidence of cultural disaster: Russians, whose lives are shorter and poorer than they were under communism, have more abortions than births to avoid the costs of raising children, Bloomberg.com reported Tuesday quoting the country’s highest-ranking obstetrician. About 1.6 million women had an abortion last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, and about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. “Many more” abortions weren’t reported. [See Moscow News]

In 1991, the International Herald Tribune reported: “An entrenched ‘abortion culture’ in Russia and Eastern Europe has outlived the collapse of communism by more than a decade.” More from the article: The most startling statistics come from Russia, where abortion is used more than anywhere else in Europe — measured both in absolute terms and per capita. According to the World Health Organization, Russian women in 1990 registered 1,971 abortions for every 1,000 live births — or roughly two abortions for every childbirth. A decade later, the ratio stubbornly remains at 1,696 abortions per 1,000 births.

And it reminded me of this from Dr. Moore:

Russia’’s orphans & the Father of the fatherless
By Russell D. Moore Aug 22, 2005

Somewhere in the Kremlin right now, officials are weighing whether to cut off the adoption of Russian children to Americans and other foreigners. As I type this, two former Russian orphans, my sons Benjamin and Timothy, are running around my chair singing songs.

The Russian orphanage where my wife and I found our sons, then Maxim and Sergei, was the most horrifying place I have ever been. Its sights and smells and sounds come back to me every day. But, even more so, before my mind’s eye every day are the faces of the children we couldn’t adopt. Until now, my hope has been that Christians from America, Canada, Germany, France or somewhere may have adopted them, to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. If the anti-adoption Russians get their way, I fear that these children will be sentenced to institutions, never to find families. read the full article here

What is going on?
What makes a civilization throw away children?

Will The Next Generation Treasure Christ?