Last Sunday (22 October) was an incredible time of public declarations of faith in churches across Australia. Below Benj Gould shares what celebrating National Baptism Week was like at Greenhouse Church Long Jetty.
We had 8 baptisms. All but one were people that had come to follow Jesus in the past 6 months or less.
One family (a lady, her daughter (13), and her partner) all got baptised. They turned up to church last Easter because they watched ‘The Chosen’ and decided they needed to try church and explore more.
A lady and her son (8) drove 4 hours from out west to get baptised. The son randomly began speaking about Jesus from 2-3 years of age, and so she tried to encourage his interested and bought him a bible. Earlier this year Jesus appeared to her in a dream. In the dream Jesus gave her son a cup, and then he turned around and gave her a cup also! It was the first time she realised that Jesus would also accept her.
Another lady moved to the coast 5 years ago when she bought a business off a couple in our church. After years of conversation she finally came to church for the first time after being invited by some other friends who also go to our church. After a couple of months she had a radical encounter and conversion. Her friends were able to baptise her.
Another was Tim Cross, who I know has bounced between a few of our churches on the coast, due to having to move between different social housing. In his testimony he spoke of how much each church community has meant to him in his journey.
The eighth baptism was a spontaneous one of a young guy who had only been coming to church for a few weeks with no previous church background. His grandparents were the only christians in his family, and they recently passed away, which caused him to explore Jesus for the first time.
If you’ve got your own story of National Baptism Week to share we’d love to hear it! Send it to Crossover at:
https://www.crossover.org.au/national-baptism-week/
