Baptism
So, probably the best part of the story came last Sunday when my husband, Mark, (the lead pastor), our youth pastor, Jeff, and our children’s pastor, Kim, baptized seven people in the lake from our new church. For those of you who are not familiar with baptisms, the Bible directs us to get baptized (dunked in water) when we decide to serve Jesus for the rest of our lives. Pretty cool. Watching those seven get baptized, I couldn’t help but think how badly Christians screw up what the Bible meant to be pretty clear. I’ve watched so many people wait to get baptized until they feel they are “ready”. That usually means that they have issues in their lives that they want to rectify before they feel “clean enough” to be accepted by Jesus. The irony is that God wants people to get baptized immediately after deciding to follow Jesus because HE wants to clean them up. If we can clean up ourselves, what do we need God for in the first place?
So, as I watched those seven, I thought, “Man, I think we got it right this time.” None of those people were anywhere near perfect, just madly in love with this Jesus guy and wanting Him to mold and shape them. It was awesome. I think it was at that moment that I knew that all of the work was worth it. To just have a church that wants to grow together…leave your pedestal at the door, because nobody is on one here. It’s refreshing and I’m pretty sure it reflects alot of who Jesus really was. Didn’t He go after the prostitutes and the tax collectors? Certainly not the ones you would think that the King of Kings would be concerned with. But that’s who He was. And that’s who I want to be.