{"id":25,"date":"2009-05-13T10:49:43","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T10:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bettergatherings.com.au\/?p=25"},"modified":"2025-12-19T23:33:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T23:33:19","slug":"thanksgiving-for-the-birth-of-a-child","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bettergatherings.com.au\/?page_id=25","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Prayer Book service entitled &#8216;The Thanksgiving of Women after Child-Birth, commonly called the Churching of Women&#8217; was adapted in <em>An Australian    Prayer Book<\/em> and published as &#8216;Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child, before the Baptism&#8217;. This is often offered to parents who do not attend church and are unwilling to make the more specific baptismal promises, or to engage in the period of preparation expected by the minister before making such promises.<\/p>\n<p>Inserting this brief service into the regular Sunday gathering can be a way of encouraging such parents to seek Christ for themselves and their child. It should be made clear, that this is <em>not an alternative to baptism<\/em>, and that baptism for the child following acceptable preparation is a desirable goal for the parents to pursue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Prayer Book service entitled &#8216;The Thanksgiving of Women after Child-Birth, commonly called the Churching of Women&#8217; was adapted in An Australian Prayer Book and published as &#8216;Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child, before the Baptism&#8217;. This is often offered to parents who do not attend church and are unwilling to make the more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-25","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child - Better Gatherings<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bettergatherings.com.au\/?page_id=25\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child - Better Gatherings\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Prayer Book service entitled &#8216;The Thanksgiving of Women after Child-Birth, commonly called the Churching of Women&#8217; was adapted in An Australian Prayer Book and published as &#8216;Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child, before the Baptism&#8217;. 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