Celebration of Church

March 15, 2009 Celebration of Church Dedication of Renovated Baptistry and Baptism, Deacon Ministry, The Lord’s Supper Text Sermon Synopsis: This year Baptists around the world are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Baptist Movement. Today’s service will celebrate three distinctive of the Baptist Church: baptism, deacon ministry and Lord’s Supper. We are Baptist partly because we celebrate the distinctive of believer’s baptism. The church works to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ and attempts to lead new believers to make a public profession of their faith. Then, in obedience to the command of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ believers are baptized (immersed in water) as a “living sign” of their death, burial and resurrection with Christ. It is a public celebration of faith. We have a newly renovated baptistry at Emmanuel and today we dedicate it with a baptism service. A second part of our worship will feature Emmanuel’s deacon ministry. Deacons are, as the name implies, servants of the congregation and minister to various needs of people in the church. A third part of our worship will feature a celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Like baptism, the “breaking of bread” has been celebrated by people of faith since the very beginning. This service is also identified as The Last Supper, Eucharist, or communion. It is a celebration in remembrance of Jesus Christ. We invite people to receive Jesus, broken so that they might be made whole. Participants receive a small piece of bread as a “living sign” of their acceptance of Jesus into their life. And they receive a small cup of grape juice as a “living sign” of entering into the New Covenant of life through the blood of Jesus Christ.