"Come on in Boys the Water is Fine"

My first cousin Floyd was the first person I saw baptized.  The church all went down to Six Mile Creek west of the bridge.  I remember the preacher dressed in a white shirt going down into the water, which was murky, kind of a lucent greenish brown.

The creek was good for camping, fishing, and swimming.  Back before all the cotton poison washed out of the fields and down into the creek, you could catch bream, bass, and catfish.  I spent many nights on Six Mile Creek checking fishing poles baited with “mud puppies,” “water lizards,” or salamanders.  I remember wondering if a fish was going to nibble old Floyd.

Floyd went down into the water and baptized in the same fashion as Delmar from the movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou.  The water in the scene from the movie looks akin to that of Six Mile Creek.

Someone in my home church got the notion that the church needed an inside, store bought, heated, baptism pool.  For some reason the church stopped using the creek and started borrowing the baptism pool at Macedonia, a neighboring church.  That’s where I was baptized a few years after Floyd.  Many years would pass before my home church would have their own inside, store bought, heated baptism pool.

It came with a new auditorium; we tore down the old church and replaced it with the present day auditorium.  As a twenty-three year, I somehow got railroaded into being the work coordinator for the building.  Our church was blessed with carpenters so I coordinated Saturday workdays.  In just a few weeks, we had this big beautiful sanctuary with choir loft, baptism pool, fluorescent lights, padded pews, central heating and cooling, and a modern sound system.

God blessed the church and many souls came to know the Lord.  One was a life-long friend of my momma named Tean.  Tean, now with the Lord, had always had a thyroid problem and was overweight.  I remember as a kid watching her arrive to church with her little car tilted from her weight.

My daughter Angela said when she was little that my momma chewed her out for mocking Tean.  She said she was not mocking, but following Ms. Tean and trying to walk like her.

David Myers, our pastor at the time was a small round man and usually needed assistance during baptisms.  Since the baptism pool was covered with curtains, we didn’t have one of those fancy river scenes on the wall, my job was to open and close the curtains.

My friend Heedy Hayes helped Brother Myers.  Heedy and I were in charge making sure everything was right for baptism.  The church well could not supply enough water for baptisms so we used water from the creek using the volunteer fire department water truck.

Since Heedy and I, along with others from the church, helped create the West Chilton Fire Department, the church we used it.  The water was nasty.  Heedy and I would spend Saturday afternoon using his sister’s swimming pool filter getting the water crystal clear for Sunday baptism.

As the big day, no pun intended, approached for Tean’s baptism, I asked Brother Myers if he had considered whether or not, Tean could get in the baptism pool.  He said he thought it was big enough.  I told him I wasn’t worried about the pool but the door leading down to the baptism pool.  Having been in charge of those things during construction, I knew that the door was a small, like ones on closets.  Suddenly Brother Myers was concerned.  We got the bright idea to hug one another and see if we could get through the door.  We did and we were relieved.

When the moment came, the church was full, along with the baptism pool.  I closed the curtain after a brief word from our beloved pastor about baptism.  Heedy assisted Tean down into the baptism waters.  With each step down, the pristine water of repentance rose higher.  The preacher, Heedy, and I forgot to calculate water displacement.

As Tean reached the bottom, the water that washes sin away crested near the top of the glass.  A Holy gasp ending with “whew” vibrated across that new auditorium.

Brother Myers took Tean, said I baptize you my sister in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  There with a bird’s eye view to the preacher’s right hand, I saw Tean go down and the waters flow over into the new choir loft in front of me.

This baptism mired the on going debate about washing sins away.  Some did not want the baptism pool, opting for the creek believing running water was better than still water for the washing away of sin.  I always told them when we pulled the plug; it became running water headed back to the creek.

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the two ordinances Baptists observe.  Baptisms have been in decline for many years prompting an investigation by the Southern Baptist Convention creating a taskforce on SBC Evangelist Impact and Declining Baptisms.  Dr Timothy George, one of my professors, responded to the taskforce findings with his article “Troubled Waters.” The article states that baptisms are no longer the central part of the act of Christian worship and have been tacked onto a service or are an appendix of the main event. It is no longer promoted as the decisive, life-transforming confession witness.  Baptism is a conscientious act of repentance and faith.

Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand . . . I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost . . . And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:1b, 11, 16-17 KJV).