Baptism
The purpose of preparation is to enable those involved to understand what baptism means and the solemn Christian commitment that it entails.
There will be Baptism Preparation Sessions in St Mary’s Church, as part of a six week course aiming to guide and inform anyone interested in knowing more about Jesus.
St Mary’s follows the orders of service in Common Worship that were authorised for use from 1998. The orders of service for baptism in Common Worship use more contemporary language.
There are a number of core elements that can be seen in the order of service in the Book of Common Worship, central to Christian baptism that can be found in services of baptism from very early times.
These core elements are:
- An explanation of the meaning of baptism
- The expression of a desire to be baptised, made either by the candidates or by the parents and/or Godparents on their behalf.
- The renunciation of the devil and all that is evil and a declaration of turning to Christ, made either by the candidates for baptism or, in the case of infants, by someone speaking on their behalf. In the Book of Common Worship it is the parents and Godparents who do this.
- The making of the sign of the cross on the candidates for baptism to signify that henceforth they belong to Christ and must be prepared to live as His followers
- A prayer asking God to use the water of baptism to cleanse the candidates from sin and give them new life as part of His people
- A declaration of Christian faith based on the ancient statement of Christian belief called the ‘Apostles’ Creed’, made either by the candidates or by the parents and/or Godparents
- Baptism with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
- A prayer that those baptised may grow in holiness and may come eventually to share in the life of God’s eternal kingdom
- A declaration of what it means to live as a baptised follower of Jesus Christ or, in the case of infants, a declaration of the responsibility of parents and Godparents to bring them up to follow Christ
