Church Dedication

This morning at church they had the kids' dedication.  Our church hasn't done this for the past six years, but decided to start doing it again.  Maida and Skogen (along with the other kids) were both called to the front of the church and were given Bibles!  Then a prayer was said for them, and for us, as their parents.  I thought that this was really neat and super special!  I think that our church  focused more on the children and celebrating their existence and praying for their future, rather than "dedicating" them to God.  However, I personally, thought a lot about it before hand and after reading my friend Sarah's blog a few weeks ago on the dedication of their son, and what a BIG DEAL it was at their church and to them, I saw this more as me dedicating my children to God.  I decided to borrow what Sarah said about dedication on her blog, and put it on here (hope that's okay, Sarah!) because I thought that she did a really great job of describing it (which I think was actually what their pastor said at their service).

What is dedication?

We get dedications from the bible.  Jesus' parents took him to the temple to be dedicated.

In the bible it says "Train up a child in the way he should go..." (Proverbs 22:6) The word "train up" literally means "to dedicate". The picture is we've been given children as gifts. Every child is a gift. An incredible and amazing gift from God. The act of dedicating is really us (parents) saying, "God you've given us this gift and now symbolically we give this gift back to you. We wouldn't have all the activity if God didn't give us this gift.

Not only is it a dedication of the child, but it's a dedication of the parents too. It shows that us, as parents, will raise our child with biblical principals and according to what God instituted.

It's a dedication of the child, the parents and the church family to say that we're (the church family) going to help. In dedicating, the parents, are asking the church family to stand and say in ways of teaching Sunday school, being involved with kids programming and just encouraging the child when they need encouraging and rebuking when they need rebuking.

I wasn't able to have pictures taken during the service, but I snapped a few afterwards.

After we got home from church, Skogen decided to help me sweep the floor and load the dishwasher. :)