I've got to tell you that it was great finally being back on stage as the speaker this past Sunday. It felt good. And then to have a baptism scheduled right after the service - that made it even better. But to top it off, when God shows up and moves in people's lives - that's the best. We had five people scheduled for our first baptism, but after the message, four more decided it was time to take that next step and publically identify themselves with Christ through baptism.
I won't tell you what we used to baptize people in, but I will let you go and watch it. We had the people being baptized make a short video of their story and played it before we baptized them. We had a great time. Almost everybody who came stayed for the baptism including almost two dozen first time guests! Then we fed everyone a BBQ chicken dinner. I can't stop thinking about it.
I wasn't the only one who thought it was a good day though. I've gotten a couple emails back from some of the first time guests that we emailed. Here's a sampling of what they had to say...
After we left [my husband] could not stop thinking and talking about how he felt so welcome at the church. Besides the fact that I made him wear a shirt and tie, but he got over that really fast..
We are looking forward to coming back this Sunday, we are just excited to learn more.
AND
With a young family, work stressors and other challenges we realized the need for spiritual balance in our life. The first step is terribly intimidating, but we finally did it, and were very excited about our find.
Discovery was totally different from past experiences, but completely matched who were are. We look forward to attending next Sunday. I am thankful we did take this step and can't wait to see where it's going to lead us.
Isn't that encouraging? It's days like that which make it easy and exciting to get up and go to 'work'. (I won't tell you about the days that make you want to stay in bed and cry - at least I won't tell you right now). You can get any of the videos from here.
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1 comment:
Jason, I hate looking at your updates because I always end up crying!! The video of the baptisms was amazing and I loved hearing the testimonies! Fred & I went to the Baptist convention in Greensboro and one of the speakers showed how they do their baptisms. He has them give their testimony before they get baptized. We shared that with Bro. Chuck and he really liked the idea. But I think video would be much better because it would help the people giving the testimony time to breath and not be so intimidated. It is so exciting to see God ALL OVER Discovery!!
May God continue to bless ya'll!!
Love,
Val
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