Moment of Surrender

You may have picked up that I, along with my brother and sister-in-law, were baptised on Sunday morning. It was a really powerful service, made more so by the fact that another member of the congregation, who has had a long journey to get this point also came forward for baptism at the same time. It was a joy and a privilege to share such a special day with her, and amazing to see God's awesome power at work in peoples' lives that morning.

For those who weren't there, or those who were and are interested, below is my testimony (or at least what I planned to say, I'm sure it didn't come out quite like this at the time). Its a bit longer than a usual blog post, but then, as I said at the time, I've always been the long-winded one!

“My faith has always been a gradual journey. I don’t have a story with massive U turns, huge rebellion or a dramatic conversion experience - I have a story of a consistent and faithful God who continues to lead me in a journey of discovery with him, a journey which, although the destination and end goal is certain, continues to take me by surprise as each day is completely different.

For as long as I can remember, faith has been an important part of my life. I was brought up in a Christian home, by loving Christian parents who demonstrated by their example the importance of Christian Faith. Aged 5 or 6 I would have told you I loved God, by age 8 or so I’d have been able to explain that Jesus died and came back to life so that we could go to heaven, and by the age of 11 I had given my life to him and asked the Holy Spirit to come into my life to help me live the way he wanted me to. And, though it doesn’t make for the most exciting Testimony, I’m pleased to be able to say that I have never strayed from a desire to live up to that commitment, even when I haven’t always done very well at it!

As I was in a Methodist Church at the time, the natural step from there was confirmation, which was an important step for me - a public declaration of what I believed, and a public statement that this was something that I was going to stick with, as well as a recognition that it was the right thing to do in the community I was part of at the time.

So, as we all do, I grew up,  and went off to University. Whilst I was there, apart from meeting my future sister-in-law and then my future wife and managing to get a degree I used the opportunity to rebel, as all good students do. In my case I rebelled against the traditional worship of the Methodist church at home, trying out various flavours of charismatic new churches across Birmingham. I learned a lot from this experience, seeing a refreshing  and exciting openness to the power of the Spirit, but also, gaining a new respect for some of the traditional elements of worship which were missing in those churches. Whilst I was happy there at the time, and look back at that as an important part of my journey, I recognised that I could never have settled permanently into that sort of church, partly because of their emphasis on the “experience” but mainly because under pinning everything that went on in those churches was a sense that they, and they alone had found the “right” way to be church - they considered themselves to be the finished product. Anyone with a different understanding of faith, with different traditions and backgrounds needed to conform to their way in order to be fully part of the community, and to be fully blessed by God. In contrast I believe that because God has made each of us different, with different skills, abilities and ways of understanding the world, we each need to worship him in a different way - which means as a church we should be a  community which appreciates all and is willing to work with that diversity.

Through all of this God led me first to Ross on Wye Baptist church, and from there, with a new job at Jaguar, to Coventry and to Queens Road, and here, for the first time since I left home go to Uni, I found a church which I could call my “home church” - a place where, despite my not always agreeing with everything which happened, I felt part of the community and was happy to settle and eventually raise my family here.

 

Soon after we were married, Sarah and I became members here, following Sarah’s baptism. At the time, I remember having a very brief conversation with Grenville, who asked if I had been baptised and when I said no, he asked if I wanted to be. I explained that over the last few years I had been to a number of Baptisms of people who had already been confirmed and listened to them, in their testimonies talk about how wrong their confirmation was, how they’d been confirmed because it was the done thing in their church, not because they’d had any particular conviction to do, or how they’d been confirmed, drifted away from faith and now been brought back - in all these cases, they saw baptism as a statement that they were now getting back on the right track. Because I wasn’t in that place, I assessed the question logically and rationally and decided that I didn’t need to get baptised, and I was happy with that answer until very recently.

 

So that's why I’m stood here today, not as a way of replacing or invalidating the things that have gone  before in my life, but in grateful and heartfelt recognition of those things that God has done for me, and in acceptance and welcoming of the things he still wants to do. I stand here not as a finished product, but recognising that I still have a lot to learn, and that, although I still haven’t found all the answers I’m looking for, those answers will all be found in God, who will reveal them in his own time."