Marked for Mission

Youth in Action

Sharon Ely Pearson, Bronwyn Clark Skov, Sharon Ely Pearson, Bronwyn Clark Skov, Bronwyn Skov

• Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780819231826
• eBook ISBN: 9780819229373
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

Put faith into action with this mission guide book
Building on the success of Call on Me: A Prayer Book for Young People, this book focuses on the themes and core values of youth ministries in the Episcopal Church. Youth seek ways to put their faith into action and claim their "power, " which is a hallmark of the millennial generation according to recent research. This book offers reflections and prayers to help young people do just that—to live out their faith at home, church, community, and beyond. It specifically addresses Episcopal identity for emerging adults, ages 15-25. Available in kivar or paperback binding.

THE BAPTISMAL COVENANT

O God, you have created all things by the power of your Word, and you renew the earth by your Spirit: Give now the water of life to those who thirst for you, that they may bring forth abundant fruit in your glorious kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer, p. 290

I Will, With God’s Help

Our Baptismal Covenant begins with an affirmation of our faith in the Trinity found in the Apostles’ Creed. In response to the first three questions, as a community we acknowledge our belief in God as Creator, Jesus as Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit as the Sustainer. Together with the additional five questions, the Baptismal Covenant is primarily about God and the important relationship God establishes with us in baptism. It tells us who God is, and what God has done for us. It tells us that God loves us and calls us into relationship. God calls us to participate in God’s self-giving love for the sake of the world. And to that we say, “I will, with God’s help.”

A covenant is a binding agreement that is freely entered into by two or more parties that may be individuals or groups of people. It is an important theme throughout Holy Scripture. God continually sought relationships with the people in the Old Testament: God’s bow in the clouds was the sign of a covenant with Noah. God made a covenant with Abraham, in which God promised his descendants would be as numerous as the stars and they would have the Promised Land. God made a covenant with Moses that the people of Israel would be God’s people, and God would be their God. This was to be lived out in terms of the Ten Commandments.

The new covenant is the new relationship with God given by Jesus to the apostles and through them to all who believe in Jesus (see the Book of Common Prayer, pp. 850–851). We live out our participation in the new covenant by sharing in the Holy Eucharist and in loving one another as Christ loved us (John 13:34–35).

The baptism of Jesus is one of the few incidents in his life that is mentioned in all four gospels (Matthew 3:13–17, Mark 1:9–11, Luke 3:21–22, and John 1:29–34). Baptism makes a person a member of Christ and a child of God. It is a radical sign of a new way of living one’s life, a life that is sustained by the power of the Spirit that is Christ’s.

Christian life begins with baptism, that ritual immersion in water “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” In the early church, to be baptized was to be “in Christ,” to be members of His Body, the Church, and thus share a common way of life. Baptism was understood as a pledge, vow, covenant, or contract early in the history of the Christian Church. The very term sacrament meant an oath in Roman culture. When children of Christian parents were baptized, whether as part of the households mentioned in the New Testament or as children born into families that had been Christian for generations, the parents and baptismal sponsors made this pledge.

The Creeds were first developed as baptismal statements, and the Apostles’ Creed serves as the chief individual profession of faith. As in the early days of the Church, today the baptismal candidate (or their sponsors) recites the Creed in response to three questions. A series of five questions have been added to the Creed to form the Baptismal Covenant in our Book of Common Prayer. These questions are about living as a Christian in daily life.

The first question quotes Acts 2:24, which describes the life of the early church and asks whether the candidate will also follow that pattern. The remaining questions move from the need for repentance to the need to proclaim the gospel, to serve others, and to work for justice, peace, and human dignity.

We share this new covenant with each other in Christ’s name by living as Christ lived, with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Christian life is not an individual matter, a “me and God” relationship, but a membership in a body and a life of witness and service. It calls on us to act out our faith in specific ways. It is valuable to be reminded of that whenever there is a baptism, which is why the whole community shares in the renewal of our Baptismal Covenant as part of the baptismal liturgy.

In Action

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

In the midst of my many childhood memories of church, there’s one experience in particular that helped me to claim for myself the promises made for me in my Baptismal Covenant. The date was November 16, 2007, and I was in the backseat of my Rite 13 teacher’s car, heading to the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center (BHC) for the Diocese of Massachusetts’ annual Middle School Retreat. I was thirteen, in the seventh grade, and I never ever imagined that I would be writing this all down someday.

My seventh-grade self was very different from the person I am now. My main priority was to do well in school and make everyone around me happy, and to me that meant always doing everything exactly right. I was really shy, and spent most of my time doing homework, trying to blend in with everyone else, and worrying about what other people were thinking about me. So as you can imagine, I didn’t have much confidence in myself at all—in fact, I was still trying to figure out who “myself” really was. And the same was true about my faith. Even though I had grown up going to church and Sunday school every week with my family, I had reached the point where I was trying to figure out my beliefs for myself, and decide what I thought about this whole religion thing. Essentially, my goal was just to make it through middle school and try to be invisible for as much of it as I could.

I ended up going to that first retreat on a whim—my friend and I had promised each other that “I’ll go if you go,” and eventually we both signed up. And so we piled into the car on a Friday afternoon and drove two hours through the snow, up to a little camp in the New Hampshire woods that we had never been to before and didn’t know anything about. I entered that retreat with pretty low expectations for the weekend: we would have fun, talk about God, and maybe meet a few people from other parishes.

As it turns out, I was completely unprepared for the effect that that retreat would have on me. I remember vividly every detail of the weekend—the names of the people in my small group, the table we sat at in the dining hall, even where I stood during worship. Because at that retreat, in my small group or at meals or during worship, I couldn’t be invisible. The people I had met there wouldn’t let me, because they cared about who I was and what I had to say. I had never experienced anything like that before; where everyone around me was not only the same age I was, but also of the same faith background. I had never worshipped with dance moves and a projection screen instead of a hymnal and organ. And I’d definitely never felt so close to God before.

So when Sunday afternoon rolled around and it was time for us to go back home, I didn’t want to leave. I had just discovered this incredible community and a whole new side of myself, and I was afraid that all of i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• THE BAPTISMAL COVENANT
• THE FIVE MARKS OF MISSION
• LIVING OUT MY FAITH
• RESOURCES