Tonight I am teaching the final session of our course on Christian baptism. We are looking at the spirituality of baptism. Earlier today, our staff team heard about the recent national survey of biblical literacy, and we were shocked to hear how little knowledge of the basic biblical stories is retained, not just by the population at large, but even more by people who call themselves Christians and who attend church regularly (at least twice a month).
One of the things I think we could do to bring these two things together that would provide a real witness throughout the Diocese of Oxford would be to have a week of celebrations of baptism across the diocese, maybe next year when we are looking at how we 'sustain the sacred centre' of our lives as Christians. We could publicise events that our churches would run in which people could find out what that christening that they had as a baby was all about. It wouldn't be too expensive to produce a leaflet that gave some of the Bible stories which are integral to baptism. We could include interesting factual information and some gorgeous pictures of baptisms. Maybe we could give one to every family that had had a baptism in the past year, if the local church took this project to their hearts. And we could invite everyone in our communities who had been baptised at the local church to a great party, with a creative act of worship as part of it.
One of the things I think we could do to bring these two things together that would provide a real witness throughout the Diocese of Oxford would be to have a week of celebrations of baptism across the diocese, maybe next year when we are looking at how we 'sustain the sacred centre' of our lives as Christians. We could publicise events that our churches would run in which people could find out what that christening that they had as a baby was all about. It wouldn't be too expensive to produce a leaflet that gave some of the Bible stories which are integral to baptism. We could include interesting factual information and some gorgeous pictures of baptisms. Maybe we could give one to every family that had had a baptism in the past year, if the local church took this project to their hearts. And we could invite everyone in our communities who had been baptised at the local church to a great party, with a creative act of worship as part of it.
Perhaps later we might even have another diocesan Convention, with an emphasis on the theme of the sacraments, and amongst other things, to include an exploration of evangelism through the new Christian initiation rites, through the Biblical themes around baptism, and through nurture groups like Emmaus that have an element of the catechumenate about them. All this would equip us to help people who come with their children and say that "Granny wants him or her 'done' properly", which I take as 'code' for "We would like to have our baby brought into the kind of relationship that will help him or her grow up to find out something about the God who we think exists, but who we are to scared to ask about, or who we don't have the language to talk about."
What about it? Or maybe, even a national celebration of baptism? I don't think 'inherited church' has run out of steam yet in terms of mission and evangelism and this could be one way to help people hear the good news of Jesus Christ.
What about it? Or maybe, even a national celebration of baptism? I don't think 'inherited church' has run out of steam yet in terms of mission and evangelism and this could be one way to help people hear the good news of Jesus Christ.
1 comment:
Beren, thanks for good creative thinking about this. If it helps, I think there has been some scoping, on the back of the wedings project, of the possibility of a funerals project. The methodology involved has revealed some surprising truths about our relationship with society at large. Could it be that a baptisms project, or local work founded on that methodology, could be a way for some churches into the kind of follow-up your group had in mind?
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