A creative idea for involving everyone at the service using paper plates

I created a series of paper plates, with pictures and messages on them. The pictures were of water, a cross and a candle.

Messages written on were:

• Family
• Friends
• God Parents
• Eating Out
• Meeting up for a drink/chat
• Birthday
• Living in xx (the community local to the church)

The eating out plate was aimed at the mother as she and friend’s liked to eat out. Drinking/chat was aimed at the father and friends. ‘Live in xx’ was the village where the service was taking place

The three picture symbols allowed me to talk about the significance of the symbols, and I had members of the congregation come up to hold them up.

The message plates were handled by getting everybody in the congregation to stand up if they were connected to the baptism family by what was on the plate. Again, a member of the congregation came forward to hold the plate. The birthday one started as those having a birthday in the same month as the baby, and it was then narrowed down to same date. (As it turned out she had same date as me!)

I was able to ask after all these if there was anybody who hadn’t stood up, this had no response. So I was able to talk about the total responsibility of the whole congregation, that they were all responsible for the growth and development of the baby.

Rob Marsh