Last night I baptised a new believer for the last time as pastor of Elim Church Crawley. It is always an enormous privilege to baptise new believers and last night was no exception.
One thing that made it a little different though, was what happened at the end. Instead of just singing a song after the last baptism, we left it open for anyone who wanted to be baptised. And Laura responded. I thought she might really want to be baptised, but she was feeling a little apprehensive.
Once the appeal was made she came to the front and read her testimony from a little piece of paper she had in her pocket. One of our elders immediately volunteered to help me, and we performed our unexpected baptism.
As the Ethiopian said "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptised?" (Acts 8.36)
2 comments:
Awesome story... what a great last evening of baptism for you James at Elim Crawley...
As an aside, I'm not sure if you keep count, but do you have a rough idea of how many people you have performed marriage ceremonies for, how many people you have batised, etc.... do ministers keep career stats? Did you have a best season? Like a good striker. Maybe a "25 baptism and 15 wedding" year? Ha ha, just curious....
All the best for the move up North. Take care. Jon
Yes - great last Sunday night in Crawley!
Love your comments about the stats! I'm afraid they aren't as good as they could be. I remember the year you became a Christian as being a particularly good one for baptisms. The following seasons brought a spate of marriages. In terms of strikers, I guess some churches are a bit like Michael Owen - hammer in a load of unfrogettable goals, go silent for a while and hopefully finish with a bang - not that I'm hoping MU win the league or anything like that!
Hope you and Ellie are well. Good to hear from you.
ps. Loved your latest blog post - will comment
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