In the past two months I’ve spoken with a couple of groups about baptism, prompting me to think more about the subject of godparents as I wrote about in the current issue's "Joyful Exchanges." These have been in settings of state or folk churches in Europe, so circumstances are rather different, but many of the concerns I heard would be familiar to Americans: people show up to get their babies baptized and never darken the door of church again; we try to educate them about baptism but they just don’t care; it’s impossible to get confirmands excited about affirming a baptism they don’t remember; it’s just plain more exciting to baptize people past the age of accountability than squalling infants. And yet, the deep theological conviction remains that the baptism of infants witnesses to a profound and necessary truth about God’s dealings with us.

In these good conversations two great suggestions came up that I wanted to pass along.

One idea is simply to raise the bar for the parents wanting their children baptized. It certainly doesn’t witness to the grace of God to lay down the law with indifferent parents in an authoritarian way. But that is the beauty of a congregational policy on the books. At our church, here’s what we do: six meetings with the parents, three meetings with the godparents, deep instruction on the meaning of baptism with plenty of time to raise awareness about the serious vows taken by parents and godparents at a baptism. The virtue is allowing a pastor and parish to retain their theological integrity by not baptizing willy-nilly (and after all those who are determined to get a baptism without any effort will almost certainly be able to pull it off somewhere else), and those parents who do come with fledgling faith will have a chance for it really to grow.

The other idea is to have the congregation itself contribute a godparent or two. This allows the nearly-impossible-to-alter tradition of letting parents choose good friends or family members, so often out-of-towners (and creates the aforementioned possibility for meaningful instruction), but it also takes seriously the ecclesial responsibility for raising the child in the faith. A sizable church could create a godparent team, training the people in this group for the responsibility in ways that are sensitive, encouraging, and evangelical. Even in a smaller church it would be quite easy to find the passionate churchgoers and award them this responsibility. A subset of this idea is to have a younger child, say starting at the age of 8, or a confirmand be the godparent. Being a part of a baby’s baptism brings home the reality of affirmation of baptism to someone approaching confirmation; it trusts the child with an important responsibility; and it is practice for the missionary call to teach and proclaim the faith.