This past weekend was such a blessing to me personally. We had our second annual CrossRoad Crawfish Boil (with over 75 in attendance), we had a great worship service Sunday morning (in spite of the technical difficulties), and we were pirviliged to baptize two folks into the fellowship of our local church. What a great weekend!
The Crawfish Boil
Yes, that is my son in the picture above. It is hard to believe that God can use these little critters (crawfish - not kids) to produce fellowship among the saints such as we experienced Saturday afternoon. But fellowship is what we had. I received and cherished the opportunity to learn more about my brothers and sisters in Christ, I got to meet some of your friends and family who were visiting from out of town, and I got to feast on crawfish cooked perfectly by Stephen Lukinovich. A special word of thanks to Stephen who footed the bill to ship sixty pounds of live crawfish up from Louisiana for our special event. We had twice as many folks as last year. I look forward to reaching out to even more next year.
The Gathering
For those of you unfamiliar with CrossRoad's terminology, "The Gathering" is what we call our corporate worship service. It is a time when the saints gather to worship our creator as a body of believers. This Sunday was just a great day in the Lord. The hymns chosen by Todd Weedman taught us great theology and led us to reflect upon the majesty and holiness of God. We had a wonderful opportunity to pray for the Meldrums. We also had more first time guests join us than we have had on a single day since our launch back in September. I appreciate the way our members are striving to live missional lives and reach out to our community. Don't forget our media ministry. If you cannot get someone to join you for a worship service, perhaps you can get them to listen to a particular message on CD as they drive to work. Good job folks, Let's continue to reach out to our community with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Baptism
One of the greatest blessings of being a pastor is having the privilige to baptize new believers in Jesus Christ. The event itself is a testimony to God's work of redeeming lost sinners and provides a beautful picture of the gift of grace wrought in the life of the new believer. Sunday, as we baptized Maryn and David, I was reminded of the command to make disciples. Baptism is but a small portion of the Great Commission. Our work was not completed in their lives because we baptized them into membership in our church. Our work is just beginning. We now have an obligation to teach all that Christ commanded (that is discipleship in a nutshell, see Matthew 28.18-20).
David Breeden gets baptized...
Maryn Meldrum gets baptized...
The contrast in situations with each of these baptisms should serve as a reminder to approach children's baptisms with great care. David, who has been saved for over ten years, was baptized yesterday because over the course of the past few weeks he had come to the conclusion that he was "baptized" as an unbeliever when he was a child. Baptism is an ordinance of the church and is for believers only. If we baptize children that do not understand the gospel and have not responded savingly to the gospel, we risk giving them a false sense of security with regard to eternal life. Maryn is an example of a child that both understands and has responded to the gospel. The need to be careful does not mean that we should not baptize children or receive them into membership. We just need to proceed with caution.
I look forward to your comments or testimonies about baptism, fellowship, or how this past weekend was a blessing to you.
Yours in Christ,I look forward to your comments or testimonies about baptism, fellowship, or how this past weekend was a blessing to you.
Chris
