Child Dedication

Let your family/friends know to be sitting down towards the front of the sanctuary 5 minutes before the start of the worship service (along w/ yourselves). Our first speaker will invite the parents and little ones to come up on stage (after the first set of worship songs). To help keep the service running smoothly, only the parents will be invited to stand on the stage during the dedication. Friends, family and godparents should remain seated with the audience. You will be passed a microphone to introduce yourselves and your little ones to the audience. Afterwards, our speaker will say a word about dedication and then pray for all the families and little ones on stage.

Human life is a gift from God and begins at conception.

"Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from Him" -Psalm 127:3 NLT

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" -Jeremiah 1:5 NIV

"You are the one who put me together inside my mother's body, and I praise you because of the wonderful way you created me. Everything you do is marvelous! Of this I have no doubt" -Psalm 139:13-14 CEV

In response to God's gift of children, His people have honored Him by dedicating their children to His purposes. The example of Hannah dedicating Samuel:
"I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord" -1 Samuel 1:27-28 NIV

The example of Mary and Joseph dedicating Jesus:
"When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord" -Luke 2:22Infant baptism didn't become widely practiced until about 400 years after the birth of the Christian church when Augustine developed the theology of "original sin." In a nutshell, this idea means that when children are born, they are not only sinners, but God holds them accountable for their sins. So if an infant died, Augustine believed that God would hold that child separate from the Lord for all eternity unless the child was saved (through the sacrament of Holy Baptism). Given that the infant mortality rate was high in those days, the practice of infant baptism caught on fast.

3Crosses holds to the implied Bible teaching that there's an age of understanding and accountability when people are mature enough to grasp their need for forgiveness, and thus make a faith decision for themselves. Only God truly knows that age and it may differ for each child. If kids happen to pass before that time, we believe they're going to heaven.

If you were baptized as an infant, that was certainly a special moment for your family as well. Yet at 3Crosses, infant baptism is similar to what we call 'child dedication.' Once you personally come to an age when you decide to follow Jesus, believer's baptism is your next step. Don't be afraid to get re-baptized as an act of worship and obedience to Christ.

There is no age limit on children being dedicated at 3Crosses. Child dedication is an act of parents who want to acknowledge God as the giver of life and to commit themselves to raising children in the training and instruction of the Lord. Baptism is an act of obedience on the part of an individual who has experienced salvation through Jesus Christ and desires to publicly testify of this experience.Before Jesus shed his blood for us, John the Baptist baptized people with water to symbolize that they were going to turn from their sins and live God's way. He spoke of a better baptism that Jesus would fulfill and make complete (Matthew 3:11). Christ's blood on the cross is really what washes away sins and pays our debt (Ephesians 1:7).

Baptism is the sign of the conversion believers in Christ have experienced, not the means of the conversion. It reinforces and builds up our faith as we publicly profess that we're part of God's family.

Any parent or parents who believe in the Scriptural foundation for the dedication of children, who wish to publicly acknowledge God as the giver of life, and who desire to raise their children to understand and experience a relationship with Jesus Christ are welcome to come and have their child or children dedicated to the Lord.

If you're holding off on being baptized because you feel it is a "technicality" or unnecessary, take some time to examine your motives and pray for God to help you understand his heart on baptism. Ask yourself, "Why is it that I don't want to baptized? Am I willfully disobeying?" If you're waiting for God to directly prompt you to be baptized, you need not wait any longer! He already makes that challenge to each Christ-follower by his Word.

Any parent or parents who believe in the Scriptural foundation for the dedication of children, who wish to publicly acknowledge God as the giver of life, and who desire to raise their children to understand and experience a relationship with Jesus Christ are welcome to come and have their child or children dedicated to the Lord.

Jesus instructed, "Believe and be baptized," (Mark 16:16), and that's what those who chose to align themselves with Jesus did. Jesus' words are a command for us to go public with our new faith. Baptism is an outward sign of an inward conversion experience – and it is a celebration of a new life in Christ. According to Romans 6:4, baptism identifies us with Christ's death (as we go under the water) and with his resurrection (as we come up). At baptism, the believer symbolically dies to the old self to become a brand new person who puts Jesus in charge of his or her life.