Dedicate (Sounds Like A Hip Hop Song)

by Aaron
I haven’t really mentioned this in a blog in a while so I thought I would say it again, baby dedications are cool; they really are. There is also something I really hate about baby dedications: that would be me. I feel like such a broken record when we do them because I say, essentially, the same thing every time. 


 
The last two weeks at Element we have done dedications in second service, in just a couple weeks we will be doing another (again in second service); which leads me to believe that second service must be the frisky crowd. Second service could also be the godly crowd following the biblical mandate to FILL THE EARTH, but I am pretty sure it’s the frisky crowd.
 
Sometimes people ask if we baptize infants, the answer is no, we dedicate children. Why? Baby dedications essentially came about because certain churches after the reformation stopped observing infant baptism (because infants can’t understand the ramifications of what baptism entails). As a body of believers we still want to encourage parents and children to do life in the midst of community, so at Element we practice child dedications.

A Baby Dedication is a short and simple ceremony in which believing parents, and sometimes entire families, make a commitment before the Lord to submit a child to God's will and to raise that child according to God's Word and God's ways. We also ask the entire church to commit their lives to be lived before the child in such a way that Jesus is constantly on display. A child will get their main understanding of the world through the community around them…which means we want to be a Jesus centered community.
 
So, if you happen to be at Element in the next few weeks, and happen to be in a service with a dedication, and happen to be pleasantly surprised by the great blessing that children are…thank God and dedicate your life to helping raise that little one to know, and live in, the grace of Jesus.