For Further Reflection and Discussion
- In remembering your own baptism, first focus on the experience of the moment. Was it in a font, a pool, a lake, a river, an ocean? Was the water cold? Were many people there? How were you dressed? Who baptized you? Were you scared, nervous, excited?
- Then consider the lasting experience. Has it changed your life? Your relationship with others? The way you make decisions? The way you approach daily activities? If so, how?
- What does it mean to “live the meaning of your baptism daily”? How does baptism tie into “Christ’s vision of the peaceable Kingdom of God on earth”?
- The author says that “immersing ourselves in the servant life of Christ means loving and serving people who are different and even difficult to love.” We all know such people. Are you ready to move forward with such a person? If not, what must change before you’re ready?
- What stops us from living out our call to be Christ-centered and Christ-like as his disciples?
- The author says our commitment through baptism to live as disciples is both local and global. Do you share equally in support of Local and World ministries? How does equal sharing change the way you feel about the body of Christ?
- The article tells of a man who was baptized and now feels the call to share Jesus’ unconditional love with others. Do you share such love with your family? Your co-workers? Your congregation? Strangers? People in other lands? How do you go about it?
- When you share in the Lord’s Supper you renew your baptismal covenant. How do you approach that sacrament? What makes it more than a ritual to you?
- Review the Enduring Principles. How are they related to our baptisms?
—Greg Clark
Integrated Communications
Baptism: A Disciple's Daily Decision
by Linda Booth,
Council of Twelve Apostles
Herald, October 2010
All church members are urged to examine the depth of your baptismal commitment. Having been baptized and confirmed, become fully immersed in the servant life of Christ.
Live the meaning of your baptism daily as you grow in the skills and qualities of discipleship. Actively and generously support the ministries of the church, which was divinely established to restore Christ’s covenant of peace, even the Zion of your hopes.
—Doctrine and Covenants 164:3a–b
I hardly remember my baptism. No photographs exist to help jar my memory. Only brief mental images of Grandfather Timm, waiting in the water for his anxious, 8-year-old granddaughter. I remember shivering in the cold water and feeling relief when mother met me at the top of the baptismal-fount stairs with a bath towel from home.
I probably prepared for my baptism by taking classes in the Liberty Street Congregation, the site of my baptism in Independence, Missouri. I simply don’t remember.
Baptism was an expected rite of passage for all 8-year-olds who wanted to take their place in the congregation of believers, receiving grape juice and bread that represented Jesus, who “loves the little children, all the children of the world.”
Unlike the early Christians who went through a demanding and rather-lengthy preparation for baptism or confirmation, over the years many in Community of Christ received relatively brief instruction. Examining their baptismal commitment often came later, if at all.
Paragraph three urges all members to take seriously the commitment or covenant they made in the baptismal waters. This sacred covenant expects us to follow Christ’s example. It requires whole-life stewardship, costly discipleship, and always striving “to be faithful to Christ’s vision of the peaceable Kingdom of God on earth” (Doctrine and Covenants 163:3b).
Christ’s vision was based on God’s promise that humans living in healthy, loving relationships would create a peaceful world: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6 NRSV).
Christ invited everyone to experience peace amid the conflict of human experience. To help create Christ’s vision of a peaceful world, life-changing action was required: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23 NRSV).
Jesus wasn’t talking about an inner, spiritual, or mystical cross. He was referring to costly decision-making. Cross-bearing wasn’t a onetime thought, but a daily decision to become fully immersed in the servant life of Christ.
Jesus showed us how when he “poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him” (John 13:5 NRSV).
In this one simple act, Jesus uses tools of the slaves, the towel and basin, to erase the divide between master and servant, calling each to be humble servants to one another.
Several years ago in the final commitment service at a family camp in southern Missouri, a man stood to dedicate his life to being a friend to Bill, his neighbor. People knew Bill, recently released from prison, as a man with few social skills, unable to get along with others.
Several months later I sat next to Bill’s neighbor at a potluck in the Nevada Congregation in Missouri. I asked this good man about Bill. He said that he often checked on Bill, took him to the doctor and on errands.
“I used to drop him off at the welfare office for him to pick up his check,” the man said. “However, because Bill said something inappropriate to the woman handing out the checks, he’s been banned from the office. Now I run in to pick up his check.”
“You know Bill will probably never change,” I said.
“Yes, but he’s a child of God,” the man replied.
Immersing ourselves in the servant life of Christ means loving and serving people who are different and even difficult to love.
Jesus taught his disciples they should “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27 NRSV). He followed this commandment with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which was a call to action.
During the 2009 Gulf USA Mission Center reunion, this parable came to life in Barbara’s testimony.
Barbara and Glenn live in Pascagula, Mississippi. One evening they drove from their home to meet friends at a restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana. Alongside a busy road they saw an old, bleeding black man, struggling to get on his bicycle.
“Glenn, turn around and go back,” Barbara said. “We must help him.”
Glenn reasoned that because so many cars were passing by the old man, surely someone would stop and help. But when he had an opportunity, he turned around and headed back to the old man, who still was struggling. Glenn and Barbara tended to his wounds and told him they would take him home.
As they were trying to load the man’s bicycle in their car, two police officers arrived, putting on rubber gloves to deal with the man’s bloody injuries. Barbara said she looked at her hands, which were covered in blood. They followed the police car to the man’s home, where they spent time to ensure he would be all right.
Barbara and Glenn could have made a different choice. Many drivers, some of whom probably were Christians, drove past the bleeding man. However, Barbara and Glenn stopped to help him. On that day, they traveled as “good Samaritans,” serving their “neighbor,” God’s child.
Jesus saw the inestimable and equal worth of all persons, which upset many who judged and classified people’s value by class, race, gender, age, and economic level. Jesus ate with sinners and befriended the hated tax collectors. He reached out to the untouchable Samaritans and Gentiles, welcomed a prostitute’s anointing touch, healed the sick, and proclaimed the kingdom was in their midst. He invited all to follow his example by treating all people with kindness and respect, building healthy relationships based on love and acceptance.
Paragraph three tells us that to live the meaning of our baptism daily requires we grow in the skills and qualities of discipleship and actively and generously support the ministries of the church. Our baptisms mark our common calling to Christ-centered and Christ-like lives as his disciples.
When we choose to live our discipleship in Community of Christ, we also commit to support wholeheartedly and generously the ministries of the church in our communities, congregations, and the world.
This commitment is local and global. It recognizes our brothers and sisters around the world are God’s children. They are deserving as we “generously share the invitation, ministries, and sacraments through which people can encounter the Living Christ who heals and reconciles through redemptive relationships in sacred community” (Doctrine and Covenants 163:2b).
Paragraph three of Section 164 reminds us that Community of Christ was divinely established to restore Christ’s covenant of peace, even the Zion of your hopes. When disciples share the ministries of the church, they restore Christ’s covenant of peace in places like Tri-City, Kentucky, where the pastor, Cathy, challenged the congregation to begin a Peace Club for children. “But we don’t have any children,” they said. “Well, pray about it and then ask some children to come,” Cathy responded.
In a few weeks the Peace Club began with a handful of invited children. Eighteen months later when I visited, they took me to a nearby town, Mayfield, to attend the Peace Club. I was surprised to meet nearly 60 children and youth. They packed the YMCA building because the Tri-City church was too small to hold them.
During the five-day visit, I heard the stories of children, mostly raised by single mothers. Jesus’ love, expressed by dedicated disciples, was transforming their lives.
I talked to Wendell, a recovering drug addict, who admitted he never had believed religion was important. However, his teenage daughter and son attended Peace Club. They began to do better in school, and their home became more peaceful. When they asked him if they could be baptized, he thought he should check out the Tri-City Community of Christ.
The unconditional love shown to him and his children amazed him. He said Jesus now was real for him because of how these people lived their lives and treated his family. He was baptized, and he feels called to share Jesus’ unconditional love with others.
I rode in the car with Betty, a retired widow living on a limited budget. She told me these children were like her own. “For the first time in my life,” Betty said, “I understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.”
Betty and her fellow disciples live their baptismal covenant daily as committed disciples of Jesus Christ. As they generously support the church’s ministries, Zion is real because Jesus’ love unconditionally flows to all.