Eastwood Church of Christ

Read this and let me know what you think. This may challenge your thinking? This is from a (brilliant) young preacher from Waynesboro, TN.  His name is Matthew Morine. I copied this from his blog.

As a society, we seem to celebrate a lot of events in life.  We celebrate graduation, marriage, birthdays, and special occasions.  We have events to commemorate significant times in life.  At a wedding there are gifts given, meals served, and encouraging words spoken.  At a graduation party, people bring gifts and encourage the new graduate for the future.   In baptism, it seems that the level of celebration is smaller than weddings and other important events.  We tell the newly baptized individual that this is the most important thing you will ever do, that this is the most important day, but we typically do not celebrate baptism as we do other times in life.  We know the Angels are rejoicing, but on earth we seem too quick to pass on to another activities after a baptism.  Baptism is a big deal; we need to celebrate it.

I have envisioned a way to make baptism into a congregational celebration.  We have showers for babies and brides, maybe we could have a baptismal shower in which the congregation brings gifts that has helped them on their Christian walk.  These gifts could be presented to them.  Also, we could have a lot of food because this is a sign of rejoicing.  These baptismal showers could be used to encourage and invite new people to the fellowship of the church.  A lot of times the newly baptized individual has family that are not Christians.   These family members might not come to church but would could to celebrate with the newly baptized individual.  This would open doors for Christ.  This baptismal shower would encourage the members too as they are given the opportunity to share some of the most meaningful avenues of spiritual growth with one another.  It would be nice to sit around together and present the gift by telling the story about why the gift is meaningful to them.  Overall, I would like to see the church celebrate this glorious moment more in the church.  I really loved the day I was baptized into Christ–July 6, 1997 I will never forgotten.