The Baptism Report

I’ve had my snarky friends remind me for the past 24 hours that I am a blogger in a Twitter world and that my tardiness in passing along numbers is a reflection of my real-time lameness.  Oh sure, they’ve been posting numbers and tweeting results and firing on all four cylinders and whooshing past me at the speed of sound, but they’re only missing one thing:

The accurate numbers.

You see, it’s my team that counts the numbers and makes sure that all of our proverbial ducks were in a row on Sunday.  So while I can’t get you the fastest numbers, I can give you the rightest numbers (is that a word?).

Take that, Twits.  Um…I mean…Twitterers.

Yesterday was indeed an amazing day at the Summit.  For the second time, J.D. preached a “Get baptized right now, no matter what you’re wearing, who’s waiting on you, or what your objections might be” sermon.  Here at Brier Creek, we baptized in the great outdoors, just like Jesus.  (Provided that Jesus had a portable fiberglass baptistery sitting on an asphalt parking lot.)

My favorite moment is pictured above.  That’s me baptizing my friend Tommy.  I’ve known Tommy almost as long as I’ve been at the Summit. Our families often hang out together for Easter, Thanksgiving, birthday parties, you name it.  He’s one of the friendliest, most likable guys that you’d ever want to meet…but he’d never surrendered his heart to Jesus.  

For six years, I’ve prayed for him.  For much longer than that, his family has prayed for him.  Yesterday, he white-knucked it in the 10:45 service, and finally walked forward.  My friend Jason and I sat with him as he prayed to receive Christ, and after the baptism he told me, “If I knew it would feel this good, I would never have waited this long.”  

So here are the numbers…

•  6 at Cole Mill
• 13 at West Club
• 23 at Brier Creek PM
• 79 at Brier Creek AM
• =121 total stories of life change

Come back tomorrow for more stories from the tank.