HAZEN, N.D. (BP – The challenge to witness to, win and baptize 1 million people in the Southern Baptist Convention this year has reached even to rural North Dakota, where residents’ Catholic and Lutheran backgrounds present an additional challenge to communicating the importance of believer’s baptism.
By Erin Roach
Baptist Press
HAZEN, N.D. (BP) – The challenge to witness to, win
and baptize 1 million people in the Southern Baptist Convention this
year has reached even to rural North Dakota, where residents’ Catholic
and Lutheran backgrounds present an additional challenge to
communicating the importance of believer’s baptism.
Bob Pittman, pastor of Hazen Christian Fellowship in
Hazen, N.D., said his congregation wanted to do their part when SBC
President Bobby Welch launched the ‘Everyone Can! Kingdom Challenge’
for evangelism last June. Never mind their size, and never mind their
location.
“We wanted to do what we could,” Pittman told
Baptist Press. “We’re just a small church in the convention, but every
church counts, I think. As each one of us, small or large, is willing
to do our part, then we can do what he has asked us to do. I think it’s
a real challenge, and we’re trying to step up to the plate.”
Sixteen people were baptized at Hazen Fellowship
during one service April 23, the result of God working in lives through
the study of His Word and the persistence of His people.
The Southern Baptist congregation was planted in
1999 and just this year moved into a worship center of their own.
Attendance hovered around 20 for the first several
years, but during the past year, “things have really turned around,”
and the church has more than 60 members, the pastor said.
Pittman led Hazen Fellowship in the “Experiencing
God” and “The Purpose-Driven Life” studies, but one key to winning 16
people to Christ was starting a class aimed at teaching the basics of
the faith – including baptism.
“Some months ago I decided we had several people who
were just visiting, attending pretty regularly but not really members,”
Pittman said. “I thought it was time to start a members class, and at
the end of the class, everyone in there came forward to join the
church, most of them by baptism.”
One of the families has several foster children, and
in that family the parents and five children were baptized.
“They moved here from California, and they’re in
their mid-30s,” the pastor said. “The thing that really struck me is
the wife came in the other day bragging to my wife, ‘We’re going to get
new tattoos!’ Well, we’re not too excited about tattoos, but for them
it was something special because it was a tattoo of a cross, and on the
cross was the date of their baptism. They were saying by that, ‘We are
serious. We have made a commitment.’”
When the church building was constructed, the
congregation lacked the room and the funds for a baptistry, so for the
special occasion they purchased a water trough typically used for
livestock. They set it up inside the church and baptized new believers
one by one.
In addition to the seven members of one family,
another family of four and a woman in her 70s were baptized, Pittman
said.
Pittman conveyed his belief that baptism is the second step in the Christian life.
“First we trust Jesus, and then the first step in
obedience is being baptized,” he said. “I really believe that if a
person is not willing to be baptized, they are not going to go far as a
Christian. They’ve said to Jesus, ‘I want to go to heaven, but I don’t
want to do anything for You.’ They’ve limited themselves right off the
bat. I think baptism is a very special part in the life of a Christian.”