First United Methodist Church - Fort Collins, CO

I’ve been thinking about the fact that we seem to have a large number of baptisms this Sunday, and that we had designated this as “Children’s Sabbath”. Also, we have seen the ongoing horror of the death of the Amish children in Pennsylvania. We have learned that the children begged their murderer to take their lives and save the others. Those children were so selfless and sacrificing of thier own safety. How precious are the children!

In the usual baptismal ritual there is a lot about how children are born in sin because they are part of the human family and implicated in the sin of Adam and Eve. Baptism for many people is salvation from the sin of Adam and Eve. Baptism is a cleansing of the evil that we were born into.

I cannot agree with this concept. Baptism for us, here at First Church, is something entirely different. It is a community’s recongition of its responsibility and it is the parent’s owning up to the importance of what it means to raise a child in a world like this.

There is something else I beleive about baptism. We baptize children into the Christian faith and not into the United Methodist Church. Baptism is an entre into the church, but not necessarily our church. It could be a church of another denomination. We accept baptisms from other denominations and we do not require people who join our church to be baptized in our church if they have been baptized somewhere else.

Sunday will be a huge day for us. We will have five baptisms. Four of them will be at the 9:15 service and one of those is an adult. One baptism will happen at the 10:45 worship hour.

It is children’s Sabbath. Appropriately, we will have many baptisms. We will affirm the goodness of the human spirit and God is with us.

1. Do you think we are born in sin?
2. Do you believe in “original sin” or “original good”?
3. If you believe in “original good” what is the purpose of Jesus’ life and teaching?

If you have thoughts to share publically, please leave a comment with this post. For personal thoughts write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net

I look forward to your ideas.
Charles 

Natalie Sleeth is a hymn writer whose work we are featuring this Sunday. She wrote many anthems for children and one of her finest pieces of work is entitled, “One Bright Candle”. This is what she had to say about that song:

“This piece came about because of the sad and premature death of a very special young girl from Manchester, Maine –Samantha Smith. I didn’t of course know her personally but she had caught my attention because she wrote to the Russian premiere (who answered her letter) about world peace. A few years after that event she was co-starring with Robert Wagner in a new TV series and after four episodes had been filmed in London she and her father were returning home to Maine when their plane crashed. I once heard Samantha interviewed on the Today Show, and she was such a sparkling, enthusiastic and sincere person (with no obvious egotism about what she had done), that she captured my heart as well as the hearts of all who watched her. When she died so suddenly, I somehow wanted to write a piece that ‘highlighted’ the idea that one person can make a difference – now and then, here and there – so that was the thesis behind ‘One Bright Candle’.”

One child can make a difference in the world. Apparently, when Golda Meir and Anwar Sadat were meeting with President Carter at Camp David the tensions ran high until Golda brought out her pictures of her grandchildren and Sadat brought out the pictures of his. Then the two world leaders were able to look at each other as people. Children do make a difference.

Do you know any examples of a time when children turned lives around like that?
——————————————————————————–

If you have thoughts, please leave a comment with this post. For personal thoughts write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net. I look forward to your ideas.

- Charles

“The Faith of a Child”

Sunday is “Children’s Sabbath” and the sermon will wrap around what it is our church is doing for and with children. Appropriate to the occasion we are participating in 4 baptisms. We will look at what baptism means and why we do it and we will think some about the development of our faith and what was going on in the text when Jesus said, “Suffer the little children and forbid them not for to such belongs the Kingdom of God.”

Jerome Berryman has become one of the experts on “interactive learning” and Christian Education for children. He tells us, “When a person has an experience of God there is a desire both to re-experience it and to tell it to others. But how do we communicate the experience with the invisible? We compose a story, and through that story we relive the experience as well as communicate it to others. Some people have concluded that children do not experience existential questions. This is more than an error in fact. Undervaluing this existential experience of children can be very destructive for their spiritual growth. The faith of a child must be respected.”

There is the story of Sunday school teacher who asked the children before she dismissed them to go to church, “And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?” Annie replied, “Because people are sleeping.”

In our church, when it comes to Christian Education for children, we are not sleeping. We have built an environment for learning the faith and for sharing the faith in exciting ways.

Do you remember something that you learned in
Church School that has stayed with you? How has your faith evolved?

If you have thoughts, please leave a comment with this post. For personal thoughts write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net. I look forward to your ideas.

- Charles