Baptisms
24 Sep 2009
Last Sunday we had the joy of baptising four believers. They covered the whole range from a non-churched recent convert (from our latest Alpha) to a church raised, but clearly saved teenager.
I love baptisms for the following four reasons...
1) It's a wonderful opportunity to declare publicly that you are saying goodbye to the past and starting afresh.
2) It makes salvation a real demonstration. It's not just head knowledge, it results in action.
3) People who don't yet know Jesus always seem to be affected when they see the genuineness of their christian friend's baptism.
4) It declares that the Church is always growing... we have been doing this all over the world for 2,000 years.
There are many genuine believers in our churches, who for many reasons have not yet been baptised. I urge us all to continue to proclaim the vital importance of baptism and to see converts baptised as soon as possible. It seems so strange that we wait so long to baptise new believers, when biblically and experientially it only really makes sense to be baptised as a result of conversion.
We are trusting God for regular baptisms at NCC. We hope it will include a whole variety of people from very different backgrounds and that loads of their friends will be able to come and see it for themselves.
Dave
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