The fact that you’re reading this… thinking about being baptized… probably indicates that you’re at a significant point on your journey to know God. For centuries, people just like you have walked a similar path and eventually came to that place where they wanted to deeply align their lives with Jesus. Baptism was and continues to be one of the unique ways people like you express this new story they sense being written into their lives. 

So let us assure you… baptism is not something you do once you’ve gotten your life all figured out. It’s not what a person does once they have all the answers. Baptism isn’t about committing to live life perfectly. Instead, it is about admitting that you no longer want to live a single moment dislocated from intimacy with God. It’s about realizing in the way you identify with Jesus, you are becoming more of who God has longed for you to be in this world and in your life.

The beautiful mystery of the Christian faith is that, in Jesus, God actually entered into the human condition. Yet death did not have the last word. In his resurrection, God's scandalous love, redemption and new life had the final word.

The cross is a picture of God's solidarity with a broken world and a refusal to give up on humanity; to believe that even the worst in us and around us can change, can become alive, vibrant, new,...resurrected from a dead life. Trusting in Jesus then is trusting in the new thing God wants to do in your life, in this world and beyond. So to embrace Jesus is to embrace the freedom to enjoy and steward your life and all that he created for us when he made this world… free to dream and become and create and restore things to what they were intended to be. 

An amazing journey still awaits you. The next few pages will give you more information about the baptism experience and tell you how to register. So look it over carefully. If you have any questions, feel free to call or email. Our staff stands ready to respond or help in any way they can.

For people who want their entire lives to be marked by the shift in reality that has occured for them as they have entrusted themselves to Christ, baptism is a metaphor that helps mark this moment.  At Watershed, our experience has been that part of what causes baptism to be such a powerful moment for people is not only the actual event but the time they take to craft the story of how this decision came about. 

 

Hence, if you are serious about getting baptized, we would love for you to take some time to reflect and put into words the significance of this decisions.  Putting your story into words is beneficial in that doing so causes you to really articulate the journey you are on and the way your experience and intimacy with Christ is developing and maturing.  It's also beneficial for our community, should you choose to share what you've written the day of your baptism with the rest of Watershed.

 

Below are a series of questions that could be helpful in creating some structure or flow to your story.  Feel free to write as much as you feel is necessary or appropriate.  In a sense, working through the questions is essentially creating an informal rough draft.  (Watershed is a rather spiritually diverse community.)  Hence once you've submitted your content, one of our staff will engage and come along side of you to help word smith or contectualize your story for our Watershed Community.  By the end of the process, as a keep sake, we want you to have captured and communicated what has been meaningful and significant about coming to this decision.

Paul, who was someone who was baptized after he came to faith in Jesus too, wrote some things that sum it all up.

Romans 6:1-14
So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace--a new life in a new land!

That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we're going in our new grace-sovereign country.

If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.

That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don't give it the time of day. Don't even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time--remember, you've been raised from the dead into God's way of doing things. Sin can't tell you how to live. After all, you're not living under that old tyranny any longer. You're living in the freedom of God. (The Message)

2 Corinthians 5:17
Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!

Galatians 3:26-27 
By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe--Christ's life, the fulfillment of God's original promise.

Ephesians 2:7-13
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

But don't take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God's ways had no idea of any of this, didn't know the first thing about the way God works, hadn't the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God's covenants and promises in Israel, hadn't a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ- dying that death, shedding that blood--you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.

Titus 3:3-8 
It wasn't so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God's gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there's more life to come--an eternity of life! You can count on this.