Callie’s Baptism

I am very pleased that my seven year old daughter Callie was baptised on Saturday. I captured the moment on this shaky video with my little camera.

Jess produced a much better video that she has put on facebook here and I have made some photos available here.

Some of you may be thinking that seven is much too young for a believer's baptism like this but Callie has clearly made her own decision to follow Jesus. She had been asking about baptism for some time. We talked with Steve and Helen who are leaders in our church and they very responded positively. In fact they were keen to get on with it. So we arranged a mutually convenient date on a Saturday afternoon so that members of our family could come and be part of the celebration. 

We believe in baptism by full immersion. But our church doesn’t have a building that is big enough for us all to meet in never mind one with a baptismal pool. For our meetings we usually hire a local community centre or gather in each other's homes. So whenever we want to baptise people we have to think carefully about how to do it. In the past we have borrowed other church’s facilities or hired a swimming pool. This time Steve and Helen offered to host Callie’s baptism at their home using their inflatable pool in their back garden. They have baptised adults in that pool before so they knew it would be big enough to baptise Callie in.

It was a great time with some of the church, some of our family and even neighbours all piled into Steve and Helen’s home. When the pool was ready we went out into the garden. We didn’t feel there was any need to make it into a service as such, so there wasn’t singing or anything like that. Steve just explained about baptism in literally two or three minutes. It was encouraging to hear Callie shouting her agreement: ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ We had decided that Helen, along with my wife Nettes, would do the honours. So they knelt down in the pool with Callie and immersed her with everyone looking on.

A big thank you to all who took part including my niece Hannah on towel duty and of course Danni Smith who made this cake.

I would best describe Danni as a cake artist. As you can see the cake also captured the moment. Thank you Jess for arranging this; it’s not something we would have considered. The cake made a great centre piece for our little buffet. As well as food we provided soft drinks for the children and bottles of wine for the adults.

Callie was also blessed with a number of presents. We had bought her a Bible but other people gave her cards and presents too including this wonderful bracelet that tells the story of Jesus.


Christ's Story Beaded Bracelet

 

It was great to finish the afternoon chilling with Steve and Helen in the conservatory with an incense stick burning.

Phew! What a day!