How should a minister respond when non-church parents inquire about a baptism for their child? In my experience, ministers tend to respond one of three ways—none of which I am completely comfortable with.
1. Book in a date and baptize the child, no questions asked.The problem with this response is that it fails to challenge, and probably reinforces popular misconceptions about Christianity, such as the idea that people get ‘right with God’ by going through a ceremony.
2. Refuse to baptize the child, unless the parents become Christians and/or join the church.This response displays some integrity on the part of the minister, but it can leave the parents with a ‘bad taste in their mouth’; and it’s a shame if they feel rejected but don’t understand why. Indeed, such rejection might reinforce the parents’ subliminal belief that church is generally a place of negativity and judgmentalism—and that all we care about is our numbers.
3. Agree to baptize the child, provided the parents agree to do a short course about Christianity.In my opinion, this is the best of the three (and it’s the one most ministers I know go with). At the end of the day, however, we still end up leading numerous parents (and godparents) to declare things they don’t really believe. I also wonder if this practice reinforces, for all the non-Christians who attend the baptism, their subliminal belief that church is fundamentally a place of untruth; a place where things are said and done that have no bearing on ‘the real world’.
Is there a better alternative?
Here’s a suggestion I’ve come up with, in consultation with one or two friends. I’ll start by mentioning that when I joined my current church, my Rector (I write with his blessing) told me that when he gets a baptism inquiry, the first thing he tells the parents is that baptism is about three B’s: believing, behaving and belonging—which I think is a great piece of initial communication. Now, my suggestion is that ministers tell parents about the three B’s, and then explain that what we’d like to do is help them decide whether they really want to believe, behave and belong (and therefore whether they really want to go through with the baptism). We could do this by saying something like this:
‘We can take you through a short course about what Christians believe, and how our beliefs affect the way we behave or live, so you’ll be able to say with certainty and integrity that you do believe the Christian message and want to live a Christian life. Now, obviously, a short course can’t help you decide whether or not you want to belong to a church community. So, for the “belong” part, we’d like to invite you to come to our gatherings for a few weeks, so you can figure out whether or not our community is one you and your family would like to belong to.’
Unlike responses 1 and 3, this response makes it harder for non-church parents to view and treat churches like ‘drive thru’ religious service dispensers. Yet it also minimizes the possibility that they will be left feeling rejected—as they may feel if met with response 2. Indeed, the only people in a position to do any rejecting are the parents: if the baptism doesn’t happen, it won’t be because ‘the nasty minister wouldn’t do it’; it’ll be because the parents have realized that baptism involves commitments they do not actually want to make. Additionally, this response would (gently) make non-church parents aware that their understanding of Christianity is a shadow of the real thing—while inviting them, in a nonjudgmental, positive way, to discover what the real things is.
One potential difficulty with this suggestion is that parents who have had one or more children baptized before may complain that they didn’t have to go through ‘all this rigmarole’ before. In this case, I wonder if the best thing to do would be to explain that we simply want to do more to protect families from spiritual danger—the danger, as I’ve already said, of thinking they’re ‘right with God’ because they’ve gone through a ceremony. Explaining this would allow a minister to demonstrate care and concern for non-Christian families, along with the depth of his own conviction about the gospel he preaches.
