Baptism sponsors
My wife and I are Catholic. My wife was raised WELS, so we both have a strong appreciation for the WELS and how strongly they hold their beliefs. My wife's brother and wife just had a baby. They are having a non-WELS baptism sponsor and are also having my wife's sister be the other baptism sponsor. My wife's sister has never renounced her WELS membership, but she is not an active member and goes to a Missouri Synod church with her husband and children. My question is: what denomination do the baptism sponsors need to be? My wife's sister does not live around here, so we are sure the pastor in the WELS church is not aware she attends and worships at the Missouri Synod church. As a Catholic, my wife and I take baptism sponsors very seriously as they are there to witness and guide. We also take doctrine seriously and we wonder if we should tell pastor about this as to not be making a mockery of the baptism in the WELS church. Thank your for your time and we look forward to your response.
A starting point in my response is that we recognize that the formal use of sponsors is a church custom. God has neither commanded nor forbidden the practice. In Christian freedom, the practice of sponsors may or may not be utilized.
Older liturgies of Holy Baptism in our churches differentiated between witnesses and sponsors. Anyone could serve as a witness to the baptism. It was different with sponsors. Since sponsors promised to remember the baptized child in prayer, remind the child of his/her baptism, and offer counsel and assistance in seeing that the child was brought up in the Christian faith, in accordance with the teachings of the Lutheran Church (especially if the child’s parents died), individuals who served as sponsors were to be of the same faith and fellowship. That practice had concern that people not make promises that went against their consciences or religious convictions.
The baptism liturgy in Christian Worship, the hymnal used in most WELS congregations, does not differentiate between witnesses or sponsors. It does not ask questions of people who are standing up with the parents. Instead, the baptism liturgy asks the members of the congregation if they are willing to assist the parents in bringing up the child in the Christian faith. In a sense, there is a congregation of sponsors for the baptized child. It is possible that the WELS congregation you have in mind uses a different liturgy for Holy Baptism, but if it uses the one in our hymnal, there is not a recognition of sponsors. The individuals standing up with the parents are regarded as witnesses.
What this means is that parents, on their own, apart from the baptism liturgy, are free to give titles and corresponding responsibilities to those individuals who stand up with them for the baptism of their child. If they want people to serve as sponsors or godparents, they will want to communicate to the individuals involved exactly what that means. If there are thoughts of sponsors taking over the religious training of the child in the event of the death of the parents, that will need to be communicated in a legal document. If parents want individuals to serve as sponsors, they will want to take into account the stated faith of the individuals—especially the confession of faith made by their church membership—so as not to put people in compromising situations.
The membership of your wife’s sister is another matter. Hopefully, there will be communication between her and her WELS pastor so that there can be consistency in her church membership and the church where she worships.