Personal Ministry Moments

From 27 October:

Well this week not sure how you want to categorize it: it might fall under a personal story or under personal beliefs. You can choose which you like. But I must confess I had a really nice time on Sunday night. I got to baptize my eight year old daughter and another lady named Claire. As you may or may not know in the Baptist Church we do baptism a bit differently than a lot of other churches. Where-as many churches do a christening, we practice what is referred to as ‘believers baptism’ and we do full immersion, not just a wee bit of water to dampen the head. The Greek word that is found now in our Bible as ‘baptize’ could well have been translated as immerse, bury, or plunge under. Baptists tend to be a bit literal when it comes to Bible stuff so all the way under is how we do it. 

Well as you can imagine it is a fun thing for a daddy to get to baptise his own children. But since we do believers baptism it has a different meaning than a christening. For us it is a part of our testimony that we profess Jesus Christ as Saviour. The immersion baptism pictures a person dying to self and sin as they are placed under the water and then as they come up out of the water it is a picture of Jesus’ resurrection, that we are to model a new way of living. The words I usually say: “Buried in the likeness of our Saviour’s death, raised in the likeness of his resurrection, to walk in the newness of life.” 

Well this year was my wee Jessi’s turn, she has been pestering me since I baptized my Anna last year to get baptized so she kept asking: ‘Daddy when can I get baptized?’  I kept putting her off since I was thinking it was just to be like her sisters.  So I finally got to the point I just asked her why she wanted to do it. And as only a child can, she gave me back the gospel as simple as you please. Her comment was: “I want to be baptized to tell people that I love Jesus because he died for me.”

I tried over the next few weeks to talk her out of it by asking her more questions but it was always the same basic answer... and how do you answer different than the simple gospel of ‘Jesus died for our sins and we love and trust him for our salvation because of that.’ I wonder often if we don’t make the gospel harder than it really is. Jesus once said to bring the little children to him and later added that we have to come to faith like a little child. 

So basically that is what my Sunday night service was, baptizing my wee lassie and I have been blessed to have had a part in helping her and my other lassies share their faith by being their daddy and pastor who got to baptize them. I am one lucky guy, I get to talk about Jesus, minister to my family and community, and I call it work... Baptisms are fun for sure... maybe another time I’ll share about the other lady that I baptized, lovely story that as well... 

Thanks for listening to a personal moment,

Rev. Jon (the Baptist...)