Passing on Our Faith

Marks of Mission No. 2
Teaching Baptizing and Nurturing New Believers

How long have you been a Christian?

Many of us would say we have grown up Christian. We were baptized as infants. We attended Sunday school. We continued to be active through church youth activities, and apart from a brief absence perhaps around the age of 20, we always considered ourselves part of a parish.

Others would have a more specific answer, a time when we were encouraged to become a Christian, and joined the church and were either baptized as an adult, or made a profession of faith to reaffirm our commitment to Christ.

Whatever our background, our Christian journey is just that, a journey, with many stages, and with God’s help growth. And we all have something to pass on to other travellers.

Think of our roles as parents. We, with the help of an education system, help to pass on to the next generation the means to become productive citizens. And we often help each other, within family groupings, and within neighbourhood groups to fulfill that task. It takes a village to raise a child, the old saying goes.

That brings us to our second mark of mission: teaching, nurturing and baptizing new believers.

And on that score our Anglican church in general, and our parish in specific, has not been doing too well lately.

As I was looking over our baptismal and confirmation records looking for a specific request for information, I saw a pattern. During the 50’s and 60’s there were many baptized and confirmed. The numbers gradually but steadily declined over the 70’s and 80’s, 90’s until coming to an abrupt halt in the last decade. The last Baptism was in 2009. The last confirmation was in 2005.

That’s a telling sign that we aren’t meeting our challenge laid out in the second mark of mission.

Now far be it from me to lay blame for this. But when a parish ceases to grown, nurture the next generation, and welcome new adult members, it places its future in jeopardy.

When there are only funerals and no baptisms, weddings or confirmations, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a parish is in difficulty.

In our last Mark of Mission, the first one we talked about proclaiming the good news, telling others about our faith, communicating it in whatever evironments we are in, through our relationships.

We are Christ’s witnesses, not just the clergy or the leadership of the parish.

So we all share in the responsibility for the teaching that comes after the telling. So in that way the second Mark of Mission depends on the first.

Coming to faith is a complex process. And there is a spiritual hunger out there. The days have long past when we can expect that having a beautiful church. Good music and good liturgy are enough to ensure that people will join us in our Christian journey.

We have to reach out to the community, be more in evidence, go beyond our walls. And that can be done in different ways by people of all ages.

We can all be teachers, even if we feel inadequate for the role, because it’s really God who is working through us when we carry out our ministry in Christ’s name, and act as his witnesses.

While I was sorting my papers before our downsizing move which is now less than a month away, I came across a hand written thank-you not from a family who had called me to attend a seriously ill person late at night in the hospital. I prayed with them, and the person died peacefully. They felt through me God had answered prayer to relieve this person of his suffering. I felt, as I always do facing death, that it is God who is in control, and I am humbled to be in the role of intercessor.

So if we approach teaching, baptizing and nurture as a sacred task in which God will give us the strength, then perhaps it might seem more possible.

We Anglicans are often reluctant to talk about our faith, compared to evangelicals and fundamentalists. That’s a good thing in one way, because we don’t offer easy answers. And we view conversion as a complex process, not just a matter of professing a few core beliefs.

But it’s a bad thing because if we regarding faith as a private matter, than we lose a chance to make an impact on someone who might be searching for meaning. Some of the people who are joining churches theses days are doing it later in life. They are more aware of their own mortality, and realize our culture of cinsumption and materialism doesn’t offer all the answers.

So they are questing for something authentic. Our Anglican communion, as I’ve said before, offers the middle way between Roman Catholicism and the reformed tradition. We have music and liturgy which has stood the test of time, and has been modified in the last forty years to incorporate contemporary language and music.

It is the task of the whole body of the church to fulfill our call to ministry—to teach, baptize and nurture new believers.

That hasn’t been our pattern for some time, and while there are other societal factors at work—like the commercialization of Sundays, the growth of two income families, the demands of childrens’ sports and cultural activities---the fact remains that if we want to carry on as active parishes, we need to engage in this second mark of mission.

We need to have new people who are being baptized, taught and coming to faith. We need to take responsibility for each other on our faith journeys.

Another symptom of decline related to the second mark of mission is the absence of thriving Christian education programs for adults, and Sunday schools, other Christian education programs for children.

We are never too old to stop learning about our faith. When Coline came back to the church in her 40’s at a church in Streetsville, Ontario, she went through new member classes which talked out our faith, and how we live it out. That parish has become known for its strength in evangelism and outreach to the community.

So there are challenges, but there are also opportunities. It is a challenging time to be in the church, but also an exciting time because with God anything is possible. It is up to all of us to discern what gifts we can offer to contribute to the mission of the church.

Here is a prayer from the Diocese of St. David’s in Wales which is an attempt to address the five marks of mission. I will repeat it each Sunday for the remainder of this series.

God our Father, always behind us,
God the son, always alongside us,
God, the Holy Spirit, always ahead of us,
Calm our fears and renew our faith,
So that with you we may venture
To break new ground, take risks
And further your mission in this Diocese,
To your honour and glory.
Amen