Wednesday night, Katy and I went to the first meeting of the membership course for Providence Church. We had a great time, met a few folks, ate some Subway, and covered some ground regarding what Barry (and the rest of the leadership) believes. Barry gave us a brief history of himself and the genesis of Providence, but for the large portion of the two-hour session, he dealt with theology. A lot of theology. I felt a little awkward because I didn’t bring our Bibles, figuring that we wouldn’t really need them. Wrong. We probably covered over twenty passages of scripture in dealing with the more church-oriented theology Barry adheres to, not including the passages he cited from memory. So, needless to say, I had a great time. I love theology and I love knowing that Providence’s theology and vision is based heavily on scripture, not just on ideas.
Among some of the things we dealt with (importance on family leadership, definitions of lost, saved, and “religiously lost”, the demands of a member, and ordinances), Barry mentioned a tidbit of church theology that I honestly have overlooked in my life. That subject is rededication. How many of us (who grew up Baptist, I assume) have seen quite a few rededications in our churches? Now, I don’t think I’ve witnessed a ton in my home churches, but I have seen several. I’ve even seen the same person rededicate their lives more than once (usually on that really emotional night at youth camp). So Barry raised the question: Is rededication biblical?
Now, let’s first define what we’re talking about. Sure, there are believers who go through dry spells and trials lasting weeks, months, even years maybe, and eventually they repent and follow Christ again. But that looks more like just repentance than “rededication”. The troubling concept for me (including Barry) is when a person, who says they got saved as a child and live a life away from Christ for years and years, until they finally repent and choose to follow Jesus when they are a young adult. And they call that “rededication”. I’ve got a problem with that. If you “get saved” as a child, but don’t decide to follow Christ until you’re in college, then it sounds like you didn’t really get saved in the first place. So why do we call it “rededication” instead? Well, Barry submits (and I agree) that we (those in the church culture) have this embarrassment issue with the idea of getting saved at a later age. Somehow, we think that if we didn’t get saved as a kid, then there’s something wrong with us, like it took longer for us to get it.
But why the embarrassment? Why, instead aren’t we just thankful that God saved you, even if it was at a later age? Why do you have to say that instead of getting saved, you actually just want to “rededicate your life”? Like I said, i understand that we all falter and have to repent, but if you go through years and years of living life without Christ, then I would speculate that maybe you might not have been saved originally. This can be especially frustrating at youth camps and Dnows, when kids rededicate every year like clockwork. What’s going on there?
Anyways, I just thought it was an interesting topic (interesting enough to discuss here) because it’s something that I have observed about church, but never questioned. I guess it’s another reminder that we should always be questioning what we do in church and why we do it, always looking towards the Bible for answers, not just our own paradigms and logic. I’d love to hear other thoughts or insight on this. Like I said, I’m just now thinking about this for the first time…I may be wrong on some of this. If that’s the case, maybe I should repent and rededicate my life.
The main person who has kept this concept in my mind is our Hawaiian friend, Ben W.(who I just saw recent pictures of by the way). It is my thought that probably he was never actually “saved” in the first place.
I agree that it’s not biblical, but does that make it bad? I don’t think so. I believe that some people feel compelled to make some kind of public statement, and they already “got saved,” they already got baptized, they already did whatever else, and they just want to take another step. As with pretty much everything else that’s done in church, it can be good or bad.
I’ll add that I believe people feel like they need to make these rededications because the pastors/preachers/churches are often high-pressure people. For example, they may have an altar call at the end of every service, even if everyone in attendance is a member of the church. Also, I think it’s sometimes the result of selfish or insecure preachers. They may sincerely hope that their preaching is having some kind of impact, and they may feel like they can judge that by decisions made or number of people crying at the altar.
I think the pressure and guilt by the clergy is more responsible for all the rededications than embarrassment.
And I’m not sure embarrassment is actually that much of a factor. In church, people are told that they can’t lose their salvation, that they won’t change overnight, and that they have to let Christ change them. I think all three of those statements are true (but maybe a little incomplete), so I think it makes perfect sense, to a layperson who has already made a public profession of faith, to rededicate.
If they were dealing with embarrassment, why make a public decision at all? Why not just make a private decision?
So, as you can see, I have mixed feelings on this. I don’t see it as biblical, but I don’t see it as anti-biblical, or anything. And I agree, people probably do it too often, but I don’t think that that necessarily means they shouldn’t do it at all.
Very good question to pose my friend. I agree with Lex’s comments about the pressure from the pulpit. It can be a temptation for a pastor to tug on the congregation’s heart strings when there hasn’t been much movement in the church. When you have to give your report to the Deacons, Association, or whatever, it sounds/looks good to say you had X amount saved and X amount of rededications.
In the larger picture of things, shouldn’t rededication be a part of the Christian journey? I think you would agree with me here. Even after we are saved, that doesn’t exempt us from sin…sometimes we stumble and sometimes we fall away for a longer period of time. But when we confess our sins and repent, we return back to God and get back on the Christian path. Maybe we should clarify on the definition of rededication to renewal in this sense. One of the parts of Christian journey is about renewal after all right?
Churches often times fail at bringing young believers (children) to understand what the decision to follow Christ is all about. Maybe they offer a new Christians class, but this happens after conversion and usually for a month or shorter. Perhaps we can learn from the early church and the use of Catechumens as a method of early discipleship. I think way too often we don’t teach and train and educate people into what they believe.
Case in point: we had 30 people check off they had accepted Christ at our Super Week this past summer, but after checking the records, half of them had already been baptized into the church. Hmmm…