Initiation Services - Introduction

Initiation Services - Introduction

This was originally published in Initiation Services 1998.

Introduction

These services are part of a new generation of liturgical provision in the Church of England called Common Worship and intended to serve the Church in its primary tasks of worship and mission.

They are all closely related to baptism and are influenced by an increasing rediscovery of the importance and meaning of baptism which is common to many churches. They owe their shape both to a new appreciation of the ancient practice of the Church, reflected for example in the Book of Common Prayer, and also to fresh thinking about the nature of baptism as expressing the identity and call of the Christian community today. An important part of the preparatory work was done by a working party drawn from the Board of Mission, the Board of Education and the Liturgical Commission which in 1995 produced a report to the House of Bishops entitled On The Way: Towards an Integrated Approach to Christian Initiation (CHP 1995). The thinking and recommendations of this report have significantly shaped these services.

This book contains

This introduction, which gives some of the background thinking to the services, shows how they are structured and gives guidance on their use.
Two groups of services:
Holy Baptism: a single rite for both adults and children, presented in several ways to allow for use in different circumstances; the options given are not exhaustive and other legal variations are of course possible. Appendices include additional material, seasonal and responsive prayers and suggested readings.
Baptism, Confirmation, Affirmation of Baptismal Faith and Reception into the Communion of the Church of England: a range of services recognizing that a person's spiritual journey does not always fall into one pattern.
A more detailed commentary on the material.

Other forms of service and prayers are in preparation. These include Thanksgiving for and Blessing of a Child, prayers for pregnancy and childbirth, and material to support someone who is formally exploring the Christian faith. Forms of prayer are also planned to support adults who are preparing for baptism or to renew their baptism in confirmation or an affirmation of baptismal faith.

Approaching the services

It is important to come to these services with a fresh mind, trying to put aside the approaches which have conditioned thinking while the ASB has been in use. The authorized text needs to be seen not as intrusive legal regulation but as a guide to performance.

The canonical expectation (Canon B 21) is that baptism takes place within the course of public worship on Sunday. Within that, there are many possibilities, and these services provide structures for baptism to take place in various contexts. These might include not only the regular celebration of the Order for Celebration of Holy Communion or A Service of the Word, but a significant celebration of Baptism as the main service of the day.

Understanding the dramatic flow

In a service of Baptism (or of Baptism and Confirmation) the Church proclaims what God has done for his people in Christ and offers us a way of entering that movement from darkness to light, from death to life, from being self-centred to being God-centred. This dramatic movement is at the heart of the service and needs to be brought out in the way it is presented, not just by reading out a series of texts. Sometimes the rich biblical imagery of the texts will resonate with people's experience, but the heart of the celebration of baptism - what really matters to those who may not pick up the verbal nuances - is what is done.

At the start of the service, the greeting is followed by an opportunity to express thanksgiving. The Liturgy of the Word and the sermon are an opportunity to set the story of what God has done in Christ alongside our own story - to explore both the points of convergence and of difference. The presentation of the candidates and their welcome by the congregation acknowledges a shared responsibility for their growth in faith and flows naturally into a solemn renunciation of evil and the expression of the desire to follow Christ. At this stage, the candidates are identified with the believing community and reminded of the cost of discipleship by receiving the sign of the cross, the badge of the pilgrim community.

In this pilgrim faith, the community journeys to the font. The candidates express their longing for the transforming grace of God's Holy Spirit in the Prayer over the Water, and identify with the community's profession of faith as they say the Creed together. Then, supported by the community, each candidate steps alone (or is carried) to the waters to be baptized in a lonely yet corporate embracing of Christ's dying and rising. Alone, we pass from death to life, leaving sin and self drowned in the waters, from which we rise to a new life that is Christ's and shared with all the baptized.

What is the new life like? It is a life directed and empowered by the Spirit, who overshadowed Jesus as he came up from the waters of baptism. As candidates emerge from the waters, they may be clothed - putting on Christ - and anointed as a sign of their belonging with all the baptized in the royal priesthood of God's holy people. Hearing a commission or charge to live out the baptized life, they take their place in the Church as they participate in the prayers of intercession, and in the action of the Eucharist.

But the life of the baptized is not only what takes place in worship. It is about living out our common life in Christ in and for the community in which we are set. At the end of the service, the newly baptized are sent out with a lighted candle, as a sign of the Church's commitment to mission: 'Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father.'

Planning the service

Once the structure is clear, attention must be given to the practical questions surrounding the action. It is necessary to give careful and imaginative thought to the setting and to the use of appropriate music and symbol. The generosity and transforming character of the gospel of Jesus Christ needs to be clear in the way the service is acted out.

It is essential to read not just the authorized text, but also the surrounding material:

Service outline - this gives an overview of the structure and flow of the service.
Notes - these occur at the beginning of each group of services and set out the basic rules and understandings that govern them. They make clear some of the possible ways the services can be used or presented.
Rubrics - these explain how the action is to be carried out and indicate when choices and options are available.
The words of the services themselves - spoken material has many different functions in a liturgical rite; understanding these will affect how words are spoken and presented.
Appendices - these make available additional material for particular occasions or seasons, which highlight different aspects of the rich variety of baptismal imaging in the Bible.
Tables - these show how the main services can be used in particular circumstances or where combined with other authorized services. Some of these possibilities are printed out in full in this book.

Common questions and further explanation about various parts of the services are placed in the Commentary.

The significance of baptism for the Church

These services are influenced by older traditions reflected in the Book of Common Prayer as well as by continued thinking in the Church that wishes to place baptism at the heart of Christian life and mission. Three themes in particular stand out in these services.

Faith as process

The celebration of baptism should not be seen in isolation from the journey to faith in Christ. This journey is itself a process of discovery and transformation within a community. A baptism service must therefore help candidate and congregation discover each other as partners within a common adventure of faith. Within this mutual journey the service has an inner logic, a movement from welcome and renunciation through to the candidate's identification with the people of God in a common faith and in shared activities of prayer, eucharist and mission.

Those who have prepared these services have paid particular attention to a call from the Anglican Communion to reintegrate mission and sacramental practice:

The journey into faith involves a process that includes awareness of God, recognition of God's work in Christ, entering into the Christian story through the scriptures, turning to Christ as Lord, incorporation into the body of Christ, nurture within the worshipping community, and being equipped and commissioned for ministry and mission within God's world. An adequate practice of baptism will recognize all these dimensions and will enable the church to play its full part in accompanying people in this journey.

International Anglican Liturgical Consultation Toronto 1991

The renewal of baptismal practice is an integral part of mission and evangelism. In these services the whole Church is challenged to engage in generosity and seriousness with all those who are seeking new life in Jesus Christ.

The Liturgical Commission is currently working on supplementary forms of service that may help to support the journey of adults and children to faith in Jesus Christ within the community of the Church.

Journey, story, pattern

In the spiritual formation of a new Christian there needs to be a healthy interaction between three aspects of the Christian life: journey, story and pattern.

Journey is a major image in the narrative of scripture from the call of Abraham through to the itinerant ministry of Jesus and beyond. As an image of human life and of the passage to faith it allows both for the integration of faith and human experience and also for the necessity of change and development.

Closely related to journey is the importance in human and Christian experience of story. It is significant that the story of Paul's conversion is told three times in the book of Acts: Christian formation must allow an individual's story to be heard and to find its place within the unfolding story of faith as it appears in the Church and in the scriptures.

Complementary to the ideas of journey or story is the theme of pattern or way. Essential to Christian formation is the appropriation of patterns of belief, prayer and behaviour that give structure and coherence to the Christian life. This is part of what the earliest Christians recognized when they called themselves The Way. The report On The Way gave careful attention to how patterns of life and faith are established in the life of the Christian and the Church. These services seek to recognize that journey and pattern are integral to the Christian life and need to be reflected in any approach to Christian initiation.

Christian identity

Baptism is much more than a beginning to the Christian life. It expresses the identity which is ours in Jesus Christ and the shape of the life to which we are called. This has implications both for individuals who are baptized and also for the continuing life of Christian congregations. St Paul recalled Christians to an understanding of their baptism. Baptism is a reality whose meaning has to be discovered at each stage of a person's life, whether it is a young person appropriating the implication of his or her baptism in infancy, an adult making their baptism their own in all the complex developments of a human life, or a mother or father discovering Christ anew in the responsibilities of parenthood. One test of the liturgical celebration of baptism is whether, over time, it enables the whole Church to see itself as a baptized community, called to partake in the life of God and to share in the mission of God to the world.

© The Archbishops' Council of the Church of England, 2000-2004
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