Sweet Tweets

Monday, June 29, 2009

Celebrating a Life Changed

For the past 2+ years I've worked at Buckhead Church, shepherding people through membership and our process for baptism.

We practice the tradition of believer's baptism, meaning that we baptize only those that are able to recognize a need for a personal Savior, have placed their trust in Jesus Christ as their Savior and are willing to be obedient and go public with that belief. We have children through adults who are believers in Christ getting baptized here at BC, but we only have the adults at the main service. We have a separate celebration for the children, and the videos that they create to share their testimonies are fabulous. There are few things sweeter than hearing a child share why they decided to trust Jesus with their heart. To see one of those videos from this past spring, click here.

I was baptized in February of 2006 after I came the realization that I hadn't been baptized as a believer. I had never taken the time to investigate what baptism was about and what the Bible said about it. So when I was asked if I had been baptized as a believer in order to become a member of BC, I realized, "Oh, no, I guess I haven't, I thought my parents had taken care of that for me already." But then I looked and realized that if I was baptized before knowing Christ as my personal Savior, then what was I really being baptized for? As a symbol of my parent's hope that I would come to know Christ? Surely. As a part of that particular church's tradition and culture? Probably true to some extent.

If baptism is meant that I am identifying myself publicly as a follower of Christ, then it makes sense that the following Christ part should happen before baptism, not after. So I went ahead and was baptized as a believer, which was an awesome experience, and since I had to record my testimony on video, it was a good exercise to think through how I would share the story of how Christ changed(es) my life. It was never about "feeling" like I wanted to get baptized, or having this emotional "need" to get dunked. Often, I find that obedience is not about feeling like I want to do something, it's simply about doing.

Well, since Mom and Dad moved back to Atlanta, I had been challenging Dad to think through about what it means to be called to be obedient to the act of baptism. Since I had seen Christ transform my Dad when I was in high school, I knew that he hadn't been baptized as a believer yet. And he eventually decided that he would rather not risk being disobedient to God. So, I had the immense privilege of walking through the process of baptism here at BC with my father. Without further ado, here is his baptism video.

Bill Merkel - Baptism from buckheadchurch on Vimeo.



One of my best days ever.
Love you Daddy. I am so thankful you did this here at BC so that I could be a part of it, but, even more, I am thankful we share the incredible salvation of Christ.

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Listening to: Hillsong United - Lead Me to the Cross
via FoxyTunes

1 Remarks:

Julie Tiemann said...

Sweet post, Melissa!