Newport Baptist Church (NBC) recently had an exciting service where five teenagers and four adults were baptised – a “soul encouraging” event for the congregation of around 30 people.
“It was just a joy, a wonderful service,” said Pastor Julie Hunt. “It was such a communal event of celebrating God’s goodness. There were tears in people’s eyes as they heard everyone’s faith stories and watched these people being baptised. We give thanks to God for working in each of these people’s lives.”
Several young people first asked to be baptised, and this led to two families of four plus another teen wanting to make the public commitment.
The young people had just been studying baptism in the church’s new Y-Grow teen ministry. Weekly bible studies have been a great encouragement to the young people’s faith over the past 18 months and, in February, Y-Grow started monthly social nights.
“We have had a lot of young people coming who don’t usually want to have anything to do with the church, so we’re opening it up and showing hospitality, showing them that we’re just normal people who welcome them and love them. Kids are bringing their friends along and it’s exciting to see. Sometimes as a sole pastor you feel the pressure of needing to run everything, but when you realise God is working through you it’s such an encouragement to keep going. It’s wonderful to see what God is doing in the lives of our young people.”
Julie leads the bible studies which usually consist of reading a passage together and asking the young people to highlight something that stands out to them, or something that they question, to spark deeper discussions. They enjoy having a craft or practical activity, such as making a “blessing jar” or decorating biscuits, to reinforce the topics learnt in the bible study. “I’m learning from them as much as they learn from me,” Julie says. “Adults need the humility to learn from our young people and enjoy being able to learn from each other.”
Another way the church is being transformed is through a focus on prayer. The church holds monthly prayer meetings, and lately the members have been adopting an empty chair to pray for, asking God to bring people to fill the space.
“Because we are a small church, we had a whole lot of chairs stacked up against the back wall not being used. I’d been preaching and seeing all these chairs, and it just got to me one day. It was a God-inspired thing – I just put the chairs out and put the challenge out to the congregation to spend a few minutes praying over their empty chair before finding a seat for the church service each week. It has been truly humbling and wonderful to see God answering these faithful prayers as new folk come to our church to check it out – whether it’s just for a week or two, or longer term.”
Julie said it was very exciting to see what God is doing, and it was important to hold these blessings with “open hands, letting God do what God will do in people’s lives and in the church as we pray for people and welcome them in”.