Week # 13: Southview Community Church

We need to be better at planning our Sunday mornings; our typical trend is to wake up late, google some churches, find the closest one that has an 11:00am service and hope to serendipitously stumble into something interesting.  So far it has kinda worked out, but along the way I have created a word document with about four churches listed and a date they plan to have a special event.  Third on the list was Southview Church baptism Sunday.  Since we attended a baptism last week, I thought maybe we could venture into something more interesting, but baptism Sunday was at 11:00am and about two miles away so who were we kidding…

Week #13 Southview Community Church-baptism week!  Southview church is a member of the NorthStar Church Network, the Willow Creek Association, and the Southern Baptist Convention.  I have no idea what any of that means, I thought maybe it meant it was Baptist, but it seemed more like all of the other non-denomination churches.  The funny thing about this choice was that I was only about 5% sure it was even baptism Sunday.  When I visited the website at 10:45am Sunday morning, there was no mention of baptism at all.  I told myself and Brian that it was probably only advertised a few months ago when you could sign up to be baptized and that is why there was no longer any mention of it on the website.  By this point it was 10 til 11:00 so baptism or not, we didn’t have much choice. 

It was a small church, well normal sized really just not a mega church.  Again there was no altar, only a stage for the band in front of a modern stone wall with built-in projection screens.  The band played a modern Christian rock song or two before clearing the stage.  Then from out of nowhere, the pastor appeared in the wall behind the stage.  No, not a typo, IN THE WALL!  It wasn’t the second coming, and the Jesus walking through the wall reading was actually last week.  Turns out the middle section of the wall was actually a Plexiglas incased pool of water.  I’m not sure how I didn’t notice it at first, maybe because water is clear (this water was evidently not from the river Jordan) or maybe I was distracted by the band, or maybe it’s because who thinks there will be a fishless, lidless aquarium in the wall of a church.  All I can say is that I was not at all ready for a man to appear waist deep in water.  Just imagine, sitting there peacefully in church, the opening songs are over, so you’re expecting someone to walk on stage/altar and give an intro or start a sermon, or say “welcome.” No matter what you expect, it is normally a given that no one will be soaking wet.  But it was in fact baptism week and apparently that meant a grown man would be waist deep in a baptismal pool that’s built square into the center of the wall, who knew!?  There was no introduction, no dry person came out first to inform the congregation of what was about to happen.  It was straight from band to baptism or as they called it “going public with your faith.”

How does one go public with their faith? Come to church in gym shorts and join the pastor in the dunk tank of course – carnie optional.  Shortly after the pastor appeared, the first baptisee joined the pool (I’m assuming behind the stone wall there were some steps leading down to the water, but from the pews it looked one mini stone castle away from being a fancy built-in aquarium).  Regardless, now there were two grown men in gym shorts waist deep in water.  The second swimmer confirmed that he was ready to go public with his love of Jesus and was then dunked completely backwards into the tank, full head under water.  To ensure no baptismal water went down the wrong pipe, the pastor held a white cloth over the dunkee’s nose and mouth with one hand and supported the back of his head with the other hand.  I guess the best visual would be to picture someone being chloroformed in Shamu’s tank at SeaWorld. Eliminate the killer whale, splash zone, $6 sodas and shrink the tank a bit; add one grown man being willingly chloroformed by another and that is what going public with your faith in Jesus looks like.  And just like Sea World, after the dunk everyone cheered, us included.  How could you not, there was something moving about the gesture, and somehow it did not seem as unusual as you’d think.  Then the process repeated, this time with a chick. 

Baptism is a big part of most Christian faiths, and most of us have been to several, but this was my first that didn’t include an infant in a white outfit.  The rest of the service was fairly normal.  The pastor did eventually towel off and preach in khakis and a polo (sorry that the only consistency in my weekly report is on the dress of the rector, but it is interesting sometimes there are robes, sometimes suites, sometimes polos). Today’s casual dress could have been due to the per-sermon wade, but the church had a casual vibe.

The day before the service was community volunteer day so most of the service consisted of members speaking about the flowers they had planted/houses they had painted/and old people they had visited.   That part made me happy.  To me that is more an exercise of faith than sitting in a pew for an hour once a week.  In a past career when I regularly planned volunteer opportunities, I never loved when people said they could not volunteer because they had to attend church.  Is that really what Jesus would do, he would say “No I can’t spend time with children who have Down Syndrome today I’m going to go sit and listen to someone talk about my dad for an hour instead.” My blog, my rant! But thanks Southview, I’m glad that you got out there and volunteered, once you dried off that is.