May 23, 2016

Today was a great day at First Baptist Church of Kennett Square!

Our youth group led worship and shared a message in a special way. Instead of a sermon there were different monologues where students reflected on what it must have been like to encounter Jesus as they told familiar Bible stories through the eyes of the key characters. It was challenging to listen to their words.

Following their service we had a special baptism service. As baptists we practice “believers baptism by immersion”. This means we baptize people when they are able to make a personal confession of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. We immerse the individual because it is symbolic of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. We baptize people, “based upon their confession of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord” and we baptize them, “in the name of Father, Son & Holy Spirit.” Today was a great day of celebration.

It was a little different. Usually I am right there in the tank with the person being baptized. These days I do not have much strength. I was afraid that while I could lean them back I might not have the strength to bring them back up. It would not have been a good day if I had dropped the person being baptized, or if I had fallen over into the tank with them. So, one of our elders stepped up and into the tank and did the heavy lifting (so to speak) while I stood outside and spoke. It worked great and was the perfect picture of a community coming together to care for each other.

Congratulations to George Plumley! May your spiritual journey continue and may God continue to make himself known to you in sacred and special ways.

I don’t know how it started. Thinking back I am not sure what it was that triggered the conversation but Nancy and I had a lot of laughs on our way to church today. Rayann had spent the night with a friend so it was just the two of us. We got to talking and remembering our times at summer camp. I was a counselor for a number of years. I loved it. There was a group of boys who came every summer, all summer. Each week they would show up and we would start camp all over again and after the first two weeks they new our routine better than we did. The director, Jerry, came to me and said, “Dan, I am going to give you these older boys…you take them and do special things with them…make their summer memorable, and help them grow in their relationship with God.”

Now what do you do with a bunch of 11 and 12 year old boys who are “bored” with the same old camp program? Well, we had some fun, created adventures that everyone wanted to be a part of but were special to our cabin. It started simple. We would “sneak out” during nap time and use those two hours to build a special camp area deep within the woods. We had all kinds of shelters. Over the weeks of camp we built our own little community deep within the woods. Nobody knew where it was but us. The cook was a friend of mine. We would “sneak” to the back of the kitchen and he would load us up with everything you would need for a campfire feast. The nights we spent in our own little camp were sacred. The conversations around our fire pit were special.

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