Pastor John's Blog

    The obvious answer to the above question is; words are spoken, bread is broken, wine or juice poured and people partake. My guess is that anyone reading this article has participated in communion and thus could give a fairly accurate retelling of the process. The question being asked however is looking for a different kind of answer. I am asking if there anything out of the ordinary that happens. In other words, do the elements become the body and blood of Christ? Is Christ really present?

    I wanted to be rebaptized. I was 23 years old and wanted to be baptized in a manner that was meaningful to me. To explain this baptismal desire we need to take a short excursion back in time. I was baptized when I was five years old. My parents had waited until we were settled in Houston to have my brothers and I baptized. The pastor who baptized me was a huge man and I can still remember the water pouring out of his immense hands and running all over me.

    Should I have my baby baptized or should I wait until they are older and allow them to make their own decision? That is a question that I have been frequently asked over my 26 years of ministry. It is asked because many of the people in the churches I have served (including many of you) were reared in traditions that did not practice infant baptism, but instead only allow believer's baptism (the technical term for which is credobaptism).

    We in the church love to use churchy words. We use words like chancel, narthex, Gospels, and Trinity among others. These are not words that many of us will hear in the normal course of life (except maybe Trinity in reference to the University which Cindy and I attended). One more of those words is sacrament.