Along the Shore

sbc IMPACT! launches tomorrow! Please remember to add the site to your feeds and check in every day! I am so excited about this new project. If you are interested in submitting a guest post, or maybe a ministry/missions story about your church, please send me an e-mail.

One of my church members, Ivan Martin, shot video and edited a short piece from our baptism this past Sunday.  You have seen pictures and read testimonies from this event throughout the week.

I invite you to enjoy the video.  It is a bit grainy, but I think you can still get the feel for the atmosphere of our baptism celebration.

Please enjoy and be blessed.

This is Stephen. He and his family are new to our community and new to Crossroads Fellowship. They recently relocated to our community from southern Florida, and have become very involved in the life of our church. Stephen’s dad and mom, Ivan and Robin, have dreams to open a camp for children on their beautiful country land. They are a great family, and a great addition to our congregation.

Stephen accepted Christ as his Savior and Lord about two years ago when the family was living in Florida, but he did not express an interest in baptism. His parents have discipled him and taught him the importance of this public testimony of his faith … and that he needed to follow Jesus in obedience and be baptized. So this past Sunday he came to tell his church that Jesus is his Lord. It was an honor to participate as his parents immersed him in baptism.

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This is Hannah and Seth. Their family has been attending Crossroads for a few years. Their dad and mom, Kelvin and Jackie, united in fellowship with our church just a few weeks ago.

Both Hannah and Seth committed their lives to Jesus during our “Sonforce Kids” Vacation Bible School in July. They were so excited as they told their parents, their teachers, and me about their decision. They immediately began to ask, “When will we be baptized?” When their mother passed on the word last week that we would be having baptism on the following Sunday, I think it was Seth who exclaimed, “Well, it’s about time!”

What a beautiful picture, as these parents baptized both of their children and helped them proclaim their faith in Christ for all to see!

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This is Justin. He and his family have been coming to Crossroads for about a year and a half. Justin committed his life to Christ two summers ago while attending Vacation Bible School at the church where his family once attended. But he was a bit resistant to baptism. His mom decided not to pressure him, but she continued to explain to him the importance of baptism. She trusted that he would soon understand that baptism was an act of obedience that he still needed to take.

Then his family came to Crossroads and became involved in our ministries. Justin has been taught and discipled in our G-Force ministry for elementary children. And this summer, around VBS time, he started asking his mom some questions about baptism. And he decided that it was time. He wanted to be baptized. He wanted to tell everyone that he had given his life to Jesus.

So it was my pleasure to assist his mom, Crystal, and dad, Allen, as they baptized their oldest son. He had many friends and relatives who came to support and encourage him. It was a wonderful testimony to the faith of this precious child.

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This is Layne. She has been blessed to grow up in a home with wonderful, godly parents. Her mom and dad have been faithful members of Crossroads since we launched the church in 2002. I remember when she was just a little bitty thing.

This summer, during Vacation Bible School, Layne invited Jesus Christ inter her life as her Master and Savior. Her mom was serving on staff in our VBS. She immediately ran to tell her mom about her decision. Then she asked to come and tell me. I will never forget her coming up to me while I was in the sound booth in our worship center, with those huge crocodile tears on her face, to tell me that she had just accepted Jesus. I even got a great hug out of the deal!

And it was a wonderful privilege to assist her parents, James and Laura, as they baptized their precious little girl.

Oh, how I wish that every single little boy and girl would accept Jesus with such a perfect, precious faith of childhood. Amen!

We hosted our second baptism celebration of the summer late this afternoon. And what a perfect afternoon it turned out to be! The heat finally broke (we were down around 90 instead of 105 … a real cool spell), the humidity seemed to disappear, and there was a great breeze blowing over the hill.

This was a very special celebration because it was our first-ever time to baptize on our church land. (Many of my readers know that Crossroads Fellowship continues to meet in a long-term temporary facility while we wait for God’s timing to build our permanent home.) One one my newest church members, Ivan Martin, brought his cattle trough and placed it under our newly constructed pavilion. The local volunteer fire department brought their truck out on Thursday afternoon and filled it for us. So we were set … an afternoon of baptisms, fellowship, and great food.

This time of baptism was another first in the life of our church. It was our first baptism in which all of those being baptized were children. Several of them made their commitments to Christ during Vacation Bible School in July. I am always thrilled when our children come to the Lord and desire to follow Him in baptism.

So we made a very special day of this baptism event. And, of course, God showed up.  And He blessed everyone present with these beautiful testimonies of childhood faith. There were so many friends and relatives present, in addition to the members and regular attenders at Crossroads. It is so exciting to be leading a church full of people who seek to live out their faith and share it with the people around them. God has blessed us with seventeen baptisms over this past year. And we are so thankful for each and every precious soul and family that he has brought into the life of our church.

Once again, I’ll be sharing the stories of our baptisms throughout the coming week. I’ll have the first one posted tomorrow morning. I pray that you will be blessed and encouraged by these stories and pictures. Hopefully, I will have a video available by week’s end for your enjoyment.

Like many of you, I have been disappointed with the tenor of the conversation on so very many of our Southern Baptist blogs. A couple of weeks ago I caught a vision to try something different … a collaborative blog in Southern Baptist life that emphasized respect, civil conversations, and a focus on ministry and missions.Fellow blogger Rob Ayers was catching the same sort of vision, and we started to communicate about organizing a new collaborative effort. We contacted fellow bloggers Hariette Petersen (known to all of you as SelahV), Tony Sisk, Bowden McElroy, Roger Ferrell, and Les Puryear … and sbc IMPACT! was born. We are waiting on responses from a couple of other bloggers that we have invited to the collaboration.

UPDATE: I just received an e-mail response from David Rogers, IMB Missionary to Spain, and am pleased to announce that he will be joining as a contributor to sbc IMPACT! Welcome, David!

Meanwhile, we invite you to visit what we have up and running so far. Browse around. Ask questions. Make suggestions. Meanwhile, we will be preparing for the launch on Saturday, September 1.

Below you will find the informational statement posted on sbc IMPACT!

I look forward to engaging all of my friends in this new forum. But please, please, please don’t abandon me over here at Along the Shore. I don’t want this to become my own private “beach.”

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 Last month I did a series of post called, “Baptism Stories,” in which I shared about all of the people baptized during our outdoor celebration earlier this summer.

A helpful friend from Crossroads named Ivan Martin filmed and edited a brief DVD of the event and presented it to each family.   A pretty cool remembrance…

Just recently he converted the video and uploaded it to YouTube.  Enjoy, and be blessed.

I have to admit it … I am an e-mail junkie. I love to receive e-mail messages. I cannot even to begin to count the number of times that I check my e-mail accounts each day.But I am, after all, one of the old guys. (I remember those glorious days when there was no such thing as “call waiting,” microwaves, or home computers!) E-mail, as it turns out, has been labeled the technology of us older folks. It seems that the next generation is not so fond of my favorite way of sending messages.

Joe Ball, Youth Strategist for the Kentucky Baptist Convention, has noted this trend in his blog . He included a link to a fascinating story in USA Today. The writer claims that the up and coming generation is much more motivated by instant communication: media such as IM, text messaging, blogs, Facebook, and MySpace.

I was a bit skeptical at first, but after checking the communication habits of my two teen-age daughters, I now realize that Joe (and the USA Today person) is speaking the truth. Neither of them check their e-mail that often, but they will camp for hours in front of a computer, playing solitaire and sending messages through MSN. They will type out a text message long before they will actually dial their cell phones and talk to someone! They will actually go to different computers in different rooms and write to one another! I can’t help but think that all of this will have a tremendous impact upon the ministries of the church. But I’m not quite sure how it will have an impact, or whether said impact will be constructive or problematic.

So let’s talk about it. Let me pose a few questions:

• How do you think the established church will deal with the communication habits and technological prowess of our youth?
• How can we utilize this trend in communication within the youth culture in a creative, positive way?
• What do you think will be the impact of instant communication upon new ministries and Church Planting in the near future?

I’m looking forward to hearing your views.