Here are the top ten reasons why Washed and Welcome: A Baptism Sourcebook is different from other baptismal resources, appealing for pastors and Christian educators, impressive in its scope and format, and needed in our churches:
1) Many pastors have not been in the habit of providing pre-baptismal instruction, and this resource makes the process accessible. The resource should be assigned as a textbook in every seminary.
2) Washed and Welcome puts all the resources needed for pre-baptismal instruction together as a set of core resources.
3) The lessons offer various entry points into the significance of baptism: the liturgy itself, the catechism, the metaphorical meanings of baptism, and Daniel Erlander's books.
4) Young parents are totally in love with their babies, and taking time together with them to go over the meaning of baptism prior to the baptism will help develop a deeper relationship between pastor, parents, and infant.
5) Using these materials will deepen the pastor's or educator's faith and remembrance of their own baptism.
6) Resources in many of the sections are completely unique and new, and appeal to a wide range of teaching and learning styles.
7) Additionally, there's some deep baptismal theology on offer, important looks at liturgical and biblical texts, and an abiding playfulness about the role of baptism.
8) As I was writing and developing these lessons, it enriched and renewed my own preparation for working with families in preparation for the baptism of their child. You also will experience renewal when you make use of the resource.
9) The sourcebook includes a CD-ROM with take-home pages and all resources available as pdfs and RTFs for easy adaption to your context.
10) Pre-baptismal instruction can function as a covert form of faith formation-adults who might not otherwise attend an adult education class will attend in order to learn on behalf of their child.
I know that for many readers of this blog, December 1st, 2010 is not a signal day just because of the release of the Augsburg Fortress sourcebook for baptism, Washed and Welcome and companion resources. I hope this top ten list has convinced you that it should be, and that you should go directly to the AF web site and order the new material.
Full disclosure: Since I am the primary author for the lesson plans that form the core of the resource, I'm biased. I'm proud of what we have produced, and hope it will be used widely in congregations.
Finally, let me tell one story that illustrates both the importance and power of this resource. About two months ago, maybe about the same time the Washed and Welcome resources had gone to the printers, I brought together five families for a pre-baptismal class. In this case, we had ten parents and seven infants present for the class, including two sets of twins! You would think that a group of ten parents and seven infants (plus one older sibling) would be a challenging educational context (altogether in September-October-November, nine infants and children were baptized into Christ in our open-country congregation in South Central Wisconsin).
In fact, bringing the families together for such a learning event was not only enlivening and fun, it also built a sense of community between those present. It illustrated to the families in very tangible ways that baptism is not simply an inoculation, something they and the church do together to make sure the baby goes to heaven. Instead, by taking time to study, pray, reflect, and rehearse, the families learned that baptism is incredibly important to me as a pastor, and a central commitment and sacrament of the church. We discovered in new ways how it is a washing in the name of Jesus, a new birth, dying and rising with Christ, being clothed as a prince or princess for the kingdom of God, the gifting of the Holy Spirit, and bodying into the body of Christ, the church.
I am convinced that on the day of the baptism of their child, all the liturgical actions we performed took on heightened significance for them. It is worth the time. I am also convinced that part of the reason our congregation (in a rural context) was having increasing numbers of baptism, and increasing participation on the part of younger families with children, was precisely because we took pre-baptismal instruction seriously, and then followed up intentionally with families over the long haul helping them live into the promises they made at the baptism of their child, together with sponsors and the congregation.
I encourage you to purchase a copy of the sourcebook right away, and then consider gathering with neighboring pastors and Christian educators to discuss how you will make use of the resource to deepen pre-baptismal formation in your contexts. Thank you.
Thanks for your delightful blog post! And, especially, for your help in creating this superb resource for congregations and families.
ReplyDeleteBlessings,
Beth Lewis, President & CEO
Augsburg Fortress
ceo@augsburgfortress.org
http://twitter.com/bethalewis
Thank you, Beth, for the opportunity to work on such a resource. I'm more than proud!
ReplyDeleteClint, Beth, and anyone at Augsburg...
ReplyDeleteI am pleased by the theological fullness of "Washed and Welcome" and for the practical resources and helps for church leaders in pre-baptismal instruction. I have been looking forward to this resource since I took a survey, presumably in the early stages of putting this resource together.
For years, we have required such instruction before we can even "set a date" for baptism, and have found it incredibly helpful--as you said in your post, as a "covert form of faith formation" for the parents, sponsors/godparents, and anyone else who is able to attend. It is the beginning of a long process we are continuing to adapt in the congregation to put the primary work of faith formation back into the hands of families.
I want to comment on one shortcoming that I hope can still be added to this great resource. Though I appreciate the customizable take-home pages available through "Washed & Welcomed," I would rather have them in a quality book that can be used for instruction, and then over and over again by parents as they teach their children. Single-sheet printouts simply don't have the durability, nor the respect from parents to use over and over again. We have been using Erlander's book as a study guide, and finally as a take home resource. The book goes into faith chests that are given to every baptized child, along with a children's Bible, the baptismal candle, and other faith-building resources. If the resources have quality instruction and theology, I would rather forfeit the ability to customize them in exchange for a lasting, durable resource to pass on to parents and their children. The "101 ideas" book isn't that resource. It's cute and quaint, but is a bit overwhelming as a book full of a bunch of ideas, rather than a book of continuing instruction and practical theology for parents to teach the Bible and the importance of baptism in their lives. Are there any chances the take-home pages will be published in a workbook format? I would absolutely crave this resource if so!
Dear Pastor Joel,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your kind words about Washed and Welcome: A Baptism Sourcebook. Its theological fullness was an intentional aspect of its development. I’m pleased to hear you responded to our survey in the early stages of resource development; we took those responses quite seriously and incorporated much of the feedback we received into the content and design of the Washed and Welcome family. I’m also glad that you see value in the content, if not the format, of the take-home pages for parents, sponsors, and others. While we don’t have plans at this time to publish these particular pieces in a separate book for parents, it is possible that we might consider something like that in the future if enough customers express interest. In the meantime, I would invite you not to dismiss Living the Promises of Baptism: 101 Ideas for Parents too quickly as a tool for faith formation in the home. It contains solid, quality content that supports and encourages parents in their vocation of Christian parenting, and lifts up the promises God makes to us in baptism. Consider, for example, idea 1, which presents several mealtime prayers and helps for making connections between family meals and the meal we share as the body of Christ, holy communion. Or idea 13, which introduces the practice of the Examen prayer to toddlers (recalling happiest and saddest moments from our day). Or idea 37, which offers ideas for teaching a child to pray through basic forms of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Or idea 39, which suggests a way to use Luther’s explanations for the ten commandments to guide a family discussion about what the commandments mean for their family. Or idea 41, which reminds parents that “one of the great gifts we can give our children is the ability to recall God’s scriptural promises during personal crisis and at time of joy, loss, doubt, or loneliness,” and then lists specific biblical passages that could be memorized by parents and children alike. Or ideas 36, 62, and 89, all of which talk about using Bibles at home. The concept behind this book was to provide something substantive, practical, useful, enduring, and beautiful for parents raising a child in faith. At 80 small pages of short, digestible, doable ideas, I’m not sure it qualifies as overwhelming, but we may disagree on this. It is helpfully and colorfully divided into topical sections like Mealtime, Bedtime, Faith at Home, and Celebrating Seasons to make it easy for parents to find their way around the book. This past Saturday at my congregation’s Sunday school Christmas program rehearsal, I gave a copy of this book to each of my preK-K Sunday school families (I teach the 3-5-year-old class) as a gift. Yesterday morning at worship, many of them pulled me aside to express their delight and their appreciation for this resource. Far from being simply “cute and quaint,” their comments indicated that they had actually looked through the ideas and found something valuable there. We purposely kept the price of this book affordable so that congregations could realistically consider gifting a copy to each family presenting a child for baptism, or placing a copy into the type of faith chest you describe. Thanks for providing an opportunity via this post to say more about this terrific book for parents. I’m really proud of this resource, and think it will find wide usage in our congregations.
Rev. Suzanne Burke
Senior Editor, Worship
Augsburg Fortress
burkes(at)augsburgfortress(dot)org
Dear Pastor Joel,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your kind words about Washed and Welcome: A Baptism Sourcebook. Its theological fullness was an intentional aspect of its development. I’m pleased to hear you responded to our survey in the early stages of resource development; we took those responses quite seriously and incorporated much of the feedback we received into the content and design of the Washed and Welcome family. I’m also glad that you see value in the content, if not the format, of the take-home pages for parents, sponsors, and others. While we don’t have plans at this time to publish these particular pieces in a separate book for parents, it is possible that we might consider something like that in the future if enough customers express interest. In the meantime, I would invite you not to dismiss Living the Promises of Baptism: 101 Ideas for Parents too quickly as a tool for faith formation in the home. It contains solid, quality content that supports and encourages parents in their vocation of Christian parenting, and lifts up the promises God makes to us in baptism. Consider, for example, idea 1, which presents several mealtime prayers and helps for making connections between family meals and the meal we share as the body of Christ, holy communion. Or idea 13, which introduces the practice of the Examen prayer to toddlers (recalling happiest and saddest moments from our day). Or idea 37, which offers ideas for teaching a child to pray through basic forms of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Or idea 39, which suggests a way to use Luther’s explanations for the ten commandments to guide a family discussion about what the commandments mean for their family. Or idea 41, which reminds parents that “one of the great gifts we can give our children is the ability to recall God’s scriptural promises during personal crisis and at time of joy, loss, doubt, or loneliness,” and then lists specific biblical passages that could be memorized by parents and children alike. Or ideas 36, 62, and 89, all of which talk about using Bibles at home. The concept behind this book was to provide something substantive, practical, useful, enduring, and beautiful for parents raising a child in faith. At 80 small pages of short, digestible, doable ideas, I’m not sure it qualifies as overwhelming, but we may disagree on this. It is helpfully and colorfully divided into topical sections like Mealtime, Bedtime, Faith at Home, and Celebrating Seasons to make it easy for parents to find their way around the book. This past Saturday at my congregation’s Sunday school Christmas program rehearsal, I gave a copy of this book to each of my preK-K Sunday school families (I teach the 3-5-year-old class) as a gift. Yesterday morning at worship, many of them pulled me aside to express their delight and their appreciation for this resource. Far from being simply “cute and quaint,” their comments indicated that they had actually looked through the ideas and found something valuable there. We purposely kept the price of this book affordable so that congregations could realistically consider gifting a copy to each family presenting a child for baptism, or placing a copy into the type of faith chest you describe. Thanks for providing an opportunity via this post to say more about this terrific book for parents. I’m really proud of this resource, and think it will find wide usage in our congregations.
Rev. Suzanne Burke
Senior Editor, Worship
Augsburg Fortress
burkes(at)augsburgfortress(dot)org
Joel, I hope to respond with some substantive ideas in the next day or two, but two thoughts. First, I am also very proud of the full resource, including the parent book, and plan to use it with families. If you'd like a workbook for your context, you might consider adapting the worksheets into a print versions that is up to your satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteI like the adaptability of the resource, and think the parents book is very sensitive to the learning context and goals of parents.
Thanks for your comments Suzanne. I agree with most of your assessment, and I apologize if I sound too critical of these resources. Also, Clint, I apologize for using your blog as a place to post these comments, but I’m not sure how or where else to give this kind of feedback. It seems from Suzanne’s comments – and from my re-reading of my own post – that I may not have made my point clear about what I see as shortcomings of this resource. They’re probably relatively minor enough for most pastors and congregations, but they’re enough that will prevent me from being able to use them for now.
ReplyDeleteAs I hope I made clear, the “Baptism Sourcebook” is well done and has theological depth and breadth. I simply had hoped – and still hope – that the resources for teaching and preparation would have been of higher print/publication quality so that it would be in a lasting format for that could be used for years and passed from church to parent, and again from parent to child as the child grows.
The “101 Ideas” book is indeed a great resource for faith formation, full of great ideas. I think perhaps we do have to disagree on what is overwhelming for readers. For many, the number of pages doesn’t matter. I have asked a number of families to honestly review the book so that I would know how to use it, without giving any feedback of my own. Most of them liked the ideas in the book, but admitted that it would most likely sit on the shelf and be forgotten. “101 ideas” is simply too much for families to use on a consistent basis.
I understand these are opinions, and I only intend it to be feedback for Augsburg and its contributing writers. I don’t need to have an ongoing debate about this. I had only hoped that your direction for the two books would have been exactly the opposite of what it is. I would love to have a quality, lasting book for teaching theology to parents and children. On the other hand, it would be great to be able to provide the 101 ideas on a weekly or seasonal basis, connecting families to meaningful rituals for passing on, living, and interpreting faith.
Perhaps my hope was too high for this resource, since we are already doing things for baptismal preparation and living that you are trying to create with this resource (based on Clint’s first reason in his original “Top 10” post). Or perhaps my hopes were simply a different direction than that of the publisher and contributing writers. Either way, I am completely aware that you can’t please everyone, and I only intend this to be feedback.