April 26, 2007
This coming Sunday we are celebrating our ten year anniversary of being located at the corner of Coit and Parker. As we were going over the worship order in Wednesday's staff meeting, someone asked an interesting question: how many people have been baptized in the ten years that we have been in this location?
By early afternoon my assistant, Charlotte Popelarski, had the answer: 1,419 children, youth, and adults have been baptized into the Christian faith at Christ Church in the last ten years. I have to tell you that even I was stunned by that number.
Every now and then someone will ask me, "Why are we considering the building of a larger sanctuary? Isn't the one we have good enough?" There are lots of answers to that question. They involve House on the Corner and Project Hope and Bible Studies and all the other programs that have been started because of the growth of our church in the past ten years. But now I know of 1,419 reasons that are sufficient alone.
In the Gospel of Matthew these are the last words of the resurrected Jesus to his Disciples: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." 1,419 is a good start, but I think that Jesus was counting on His followers to baptize them all. Our hope is to make room for the ones yet to come!
P.S. I really hope you will be here this coming Sunday. You are going to see great pictures of our recent history, and the music will be spectacular.