Q. What is the "House Dedication Ceremony" in the New Covenant Church?

A. New Covenant Christians believe that everything belongs to God and that His disciples are but stewards of property and everything that He puts into our hands. One of the ways that we acknowledge God's sovereignty in our material lives is in the Law of Tithing whereby we return to God a portion of everything He gives to us for the support of the Kingdom work, the poor, etc..

The home is, for New Covenant Christians, a sacred place and we lay strong emphasis on the importance of making the home holy. We believe that the home is a temple, a sacred environment, where the Gospel is to be lived in the full. It is a place of peace, love, order, discipline, rest and industry. In short, the home should reflect the Gospel in action in a defined space.

There is no formal "house dedication ceremony" per se, in other words, there is no specific ritual. The principle is that everything in the home is dedicated to the glory of the Lord. When New Covenant Christians dedicate their homes (usually when they buy or rent a new house/flat, or when they convert to the Gospel) they will do the following things:

• (1) Bless the land, that it may be fruitful in terms of what is grown on it (for beauty as well as for food), that it may support the house on it, and bless the feet that walk on it;
  
• (2) Bless the house as a whole, that it may be preserved against storms, against robbers, and anything else that might endanger its well-being;
  
• (3) Bless each room in turn, that the space within the walls may be consecrated to the glory of the Lord and be pure, to be a place of hospitality and of worship, etc..

So the precise procedure is not important (unless we receive revelation later telling us a better way) so long as we recognise the need to dedicate everything to the glory of the Lord.

The actual dedication may involve just the family, or the local congregation, and/or friends. We feel that all those who share in the spirit of house dedication should be invited to attend and to share in the celebartion of God's loving kindness in providing a new home/consecrating an old one. Most of the dedication involves prayer but also involves singing praise; some would like to dance and perhaps even hold a feast. In our family, we have a flag-raising ceremony too to symbolise to the world that our house belongs to God.

A recent revelation (NC&C 323) instructs the saints to set a notice over the front doors of their homes with the inscription, "Set Apart to Yahweh" ("Holiness to the Lord"). A similar practice was followed in the Old Covenant involving the deposition of certain scriptures in a box above the door.

House dedication is not obligatory (as yet) though logically we would wonder about the attitude of a member who did not do this if he were aware of the importance of the consecration of our possessions to the Lord. Consciousness of this need is a good indicator of just how much the individual/family is conscious of the whole principle of Zion wherein everything is holy on a communal basis, and is consecrated according to the laws and practices of the Priesthood.

This page was created on 5 July 1998 Last updated on 5 July 1998

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