Baptisms!

For the past two weeks we've had something at church that hasn't happened during service for a long, long time. In fact, except for the inaugural service 9 1/2 years ago, I'm not sure that we've ever closed a service this way.

We've had baptisms at each service.

To be fair, as a church without a building, having baptisms at service is generally challenging. We've met mostly at hotels and some at the two student unions at Ohio State. That makes baptisms at service a bit challenging. But our current meeting place, a middle school, has agreed to let us bring in a baptistery (agricultural feeding tub) so we can have them at church and it's been amazing. In fact, this year already we've exceeded the baptisms for last year at 6 (I think), 3 in the past two weeks all 3 of them at church.

Two Sundays ago we had two, and what a contrast. A short, white, blond single Mom of an adopted boy and a tall, skinny black teenage boy. Yesterday it was a young, single white woman who's boyfriend was baptized last month. Two other single folks were baptized in January as well.

The best thing about this sudden upswing in conversions is that we didn't go seeking them. Oh, of course we're looking for folks to get saved, that's always the case. What I means is these conversions have not come from a focus on evangelism or some campaign to grow the church. That's been our past means of doing business, grow, grow, grow, evangelize, evangelize, evangelize. That's what we talked about, that was our point of existence.

But that's not what we've been talking about lately at all. Instead we've been talking about true biblical repentance (metenoia), loving each other and the heart of God. We've taken a hard look at ourselves, our church, our God and the vast gulf between us & Him. No push to share. No call to evangelize. None. Yet people are getting saved, and in increasing numbers.

Imagine that.