Times Like These

Christian ministry is perhaps the most rewarding and challenging job you can have simply because, as a pastor, you help guide and handle someone's journey with something divine. Because of this, there are days where you want to quit and work at Starbucks, and yet the next day you think in your brain: I never want to do anything else, this is the best job EVER.

Last night was a night where I thought that there could be no better job.

Baptisms. For those outside of the Christian faith, it might be a difficult thing to understand. We dunk people in water and then bring them out of the water. It's nothing of extreme spirituality, but rather it is a community experience. We put them in water as a physical symbol that something in their heart has changed. You go under the water as a symbol of death, of the dying of your life without God and you rise up out of the water to show the new life you have in Christ.

For me, the physical act of dunking someone is not special, but rather what it shows me, what it reminds me, and what it tells me is something so close to my heart: that God is still changing lives, that God is not done and has not finished with his work, but rather that this God who created everything good we know and see is still working in his creation for the good of his creation. For all that I do in my job, I continue in Christian ministry because I'm the lucky one who sometimes just gets to see God work. That's what I got to do last night. Here's a great video that recaps our night celebrating what God has done in some students' lives:

(Oh, and go full screen on this ish and make sure HD in on)

High School Baptisms 8/4/10 from WCC Students on Vimeo.