Why do we dedicate children

Mennonites were originally called Anabaptist or re-baptizers since they insisted on a believers baptism as opposed to infant baptism. But one thing the tradition of infant baptism has taught us is that the inclusion of children into the church community is important.

With this in mind here are three reasons why we dedicate our children and why we call it a Parent-Child Dedication. We believe it is crucially important that parents commit themselves to raise their children in a Godly manner with the desire to see them become disciples of the living Christ.

There is a lot of biblical material to suggest that the dedication of children to the service of the Lord is important and a custom that dates back to the very early days of the nation of Israel.

This is the ultimate goal of godly parenting. Parents are to actively guide and direct their dedicated child into the knowledge of the Lord. They cannot be passive about this or just wait on the child to seek God when he or she feels like it. Instead, parents should lead their child to the Lord early in life. Parents should provide their dedicated child with lots of age-appropriate spiritual training, motivation, challenging activities, and opportunities to minister to others.

They must fast and pray much for God to show Himself real to the child in a living, loving relationship. They must pass on to the child the high standard that radical involvement and commitment to God is the only way to serve Him. The child is expected not only to live a saved life, but also to live a committed life.

Parents must impart to their dedicated child a deep inner dissatisfaction with being a mediocre, apathetic, thumb-twiddling Christian. Therefore, they must consistently model before their child that there is nothing in this world more important than loving God and dedicating oneself to His cause—no job or career, no financial opportunity, no educational attainment, no romantic endeavor, and no social achievement.

Through all of this, the parents must keep the child trusting them, loving them, respecting them, and admiring them so that they can continue to influence the child to keep serving God.

It should be obvious that parenting a dedicated child requires five rare attributes— 1 uncommon spiritual balance, 2 emotional stability, 3 keen godly insight and wisdom, 4 great courage to stand by godly convictions, and 5 consistency. All five of these uncommon virtues come from the same Source: The confidence and security that the parents themselves find in God and His love for them.

That is, it is not enough for parents just to be Christians; they must find this spiritual security. Otherwise, the parents themselves will be too tossed about by their own various circumstances of life to maintain a healthy and consistent spiritual, emotional, social, and physical environment for their children.

We will quickly describe what each of the above five attributes means and how the spiritual and emotional security of the parent figures into the child-raising equation:. Otherwise, the children will be spiritually unstable. Children should not be raised in an atmosphere of religious fanaticism or legalism where they are forced to live by strict and sometimes illogical religious rules and regulations.

They must be taught plainly the biblical reasons why the rules exist. They must see a living relationship with the God of love modeled before them as the definition of true religion. Otherwise, legalism will usually cause children eventually to rebel against their parents, against the church, and against God. They will often be forced to live lives of rebellion and turmoil, none of which is helpful to their spiritual and emotional health or the salvation of their souls.

Nor should children be raised in a spiritually permissive environment where anything goes. Not enough rules is just as bad as too many rules, and sometimes worse. The emphasis should always be for the child to experience a living and loving relationship with God as the source and reason for all training. Spiritual balance is absolutely essential to raising spiritually healthy, dedicated children.

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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command your today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when your walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when your rise.