Tag: baptism

Till death do us part

Listened to the latest Mars Hill podcast on the way into work today.

The (guest) speaker made a great point about the significance of baptism. He said that in the early church, people identified with Christ. It made a lasting impact on them. They saw who he was, what he did and what the kingdom he was leading us to.

So when the early church (Jews) said, “well we don’t want you to eat this or do this or wear that” the early converts were OK with it. Even when they said, “yeah there’s this little ‘operation’ the men will need to do to show that they’re committed to the cause.” Many of the converts said, “well OK we can do that too.”

And they did these things because they saw the impact of what living in the Kingdom of God was all about – right then and right there. They saw a new economy, a new community, a new way of living and they said “we’ve seen how powerful this life Christ called us to really is and we want to be a part of it – even though it will likely mean death for us.”

For many, being identified as a follower of Christ in Rome meant death. And folks still signed up for the cause because they saw a better way, a third way of living.

And so when someone stood up and said, “I want to be baptized and identified with Christ.” The entire community knew what he was saying. He was saying I want to be a part of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. I want to take part in the redemption of the world. I want to live in community with my fellow man — even if that means death.

Powerful image.

Reminds me of several I met in Nigeria who said their families left them, their friends left them and their life was threatened because they converted to Christianity. Yet they did it joyously and willingly because they wanted to take part in the Kingdom of God.

Andrew gets babs-i-tized


Andrew
Originally uploaded by laurie416.

Our good friend Andrew (James and Mary’s son) was “babs-i-tized” yesterday morning at encounter.
I’m having some problems with the video, but Laurie’s posted the pics on her Flickr page and they’re also available in the encounter Flickr group.

Is your church on YouTube?

I’ve been doing my best to post all the original videos our church does on YouTube and now on MetaCafe.
I posted a video showing the recent baptisms at encounter on MetaCafe and within the last week or so it’s already been viewed more than 650 times.
Today there was a very interesting comment on the video page:

didn’t actually get it
wat r they doin?wat does it mean encounter baptisms?

It got me thinking about several things.

  1. There are people out there that don’t understand our Christianeze (Christian lingo). It’s so easy to forget when we get caught in our Christian circles and bubbles that we forget the rest of the world doesn’t know what we’re talking about. If all we talk to is Christian people and only talk about Christian things, the outside world probably looks at us and can’t understand a thing we’re saying. Just like the American Life episode Pray talked about.
  2. I could have posted the video on GodTube. Sure, it’s a “Christian” video and GodTube is a “Christian web site” and “Christians who understand our lingo” use the website but who is that really reaching out to? If we keep retreating to our Christian ghettos then who in the world is going to tell mr bako or others what baptism is or why we do it?
  3. Video is a POWERFUL medium. I could blog about baptism all day long but my words are limited, seeing what baptism is in video form really shows people what it’s all about.
  4. Viral videos and Web 2.0 are even more POWERFUL. Within minutes and days of posting the baptism video on MetaCafe, the video was available on my blog, the encounter blog and it was being shared all over Myspace and e-mail. The families being represented were sharing the video with their friends and family members. And they were passing it along to more people and more people – hopefully moving outside the Christian ghetto.

It just makes me think and realize – we need to be producing more content that’s available to everyone and understandable to everyone. What are you and your church doing?

Food for thought

From Mark Batterson’s blog:

“Your baptism is your ordination into ministry.”

“Ask the grandparents in your church: how many of you would lay down your life for your grandchildren? Every grandparent will raise their hand. Then ask them: how many of you would lay down your musical preferences for your grandchildren?”

“Sometimes God is more active in the world than he is in the church. Who’s had more impact alleviating suffering in the world: your church or Bono?”

“When you’re in incarnational mode you’re always living on other people’s terms.”