Q & A - Baby Dedication - Church Leader Insights

This is Kerrick Thomas – I’m the Executive Pastor at The Journey. Nelson asked me to share my answers to the following question:

Q: What do you guys do for a baby dedication? What do you read? Do you give anything away?

A: For our Baby Dedications we try to make it very simple and straight-forward. After our worship team does the first song – we invite the parents and babies to come up front. We talk about how special a day it is and how God is blessing our church.

Then we go down the line introducing each parent and each child. Trying to focus on the babies. If you are videoing it or doing imag – be sure to keep the cameras on the babies and not on you or the parents.

After the introductions we talk about the meaning of the Baby Dedication. How it’s not really about the babies – but about the parents and the church. How the baby is too young to make a decision to follow Jesus today – but as parents we can commit to raise our child in a godly way in the hopes that they will grow to make the decision for themselves and as a church we will make a commitment to support and pray for the families.

Then the pastor will read a commitment for the parents (and the parents say “we do”) and then a commitment for the church (and the church says “we do”). And then the pastor reads the certificate that each child receives and prays a prayer of blessing. It usually takes 5 or so minutes total.

Each child receives a certificate, a baby bible, and we email them with a picture of their family from that day.

Here are a couple of the documents we use for Baby Dedications (right-click and choose “save as” to download to your computer):

Hope this helps!

Blessings…

Kerrick

About Nelson Searcy

Nelson Searcy is an experienced church growth strategist, pastor, church planter and coach, consulting with churches around the world. As founder of Church Leader Insights and the Renegade Pastors Network, he has personally trained more than 3,500 church leaders in over 45 denominations through live events, seminars and monthly coaching. Nelson is also the Founding and Lead Pastor of The Journey Church, with locations across New York City and in Boca Raton, FL. Nelson and his church routinely appear on lists such as “The 50 Most Influential Churches” and “The 25 Most Innovative Leaders.” He is the author of over 100 church growth resources and 18+ books, including The Renegade Pastor: Abandoning Average in Your Life, Ministry and The Difference Maker: Using Your Everyday Life for Eternal Impact, and At the Cross with the People Who Were There. He and his wife, Kelley, have one son, Alexander.