2,158

It has been an amazing experience at Elevation the past two weeks. The series has been called "Follow" and Pastor Steven tied in a great parallel to the life of a Christian. He used the illustration Twitter. There are many people that we may 'follow' on Twitter...some are our heros, some are random, some are famous, and some are people that we may or may not agree with in different stances of faith or morals. The point is, some of us are following Jesus like we may 'follow' some people on Twitter. We agree with Him or believe certain parts of the Bible but we aren't fully on board. We don't live a life separate from the world. His challenge and illustration was deep and convicting. It was a great way to call people into baptism and to boldly proclaim faith in God. Baptism is not about salvation in Christ, it is about identifying yourself with Him. The Bible calls everyone who believes in God to be baptized and it was a great experience to be apart of. I will remember what happened this weekend for the rest of my life.

The first weekend we had 1,426 people baptized. To top that off, 732 more people stepped forward in baptism the very next weekend. That's a total of 2,158 people being baptized through Elevation Church in two weekends. Do you understand how amazing that is? Just read Acts 2! There were so many amazing stories but I want to share one with you that had a personal impact on my life. Last month, we took nearly 600 students and staff on our Summer Trip at Crossroads. I had a group of seven middle school guys who were a lot of fun. They were all talking about how on fire they were for Christ and how much fun they were having throughout the week. One of the guys, named Garrett, kept telling me late at night that He understood the Gospel but just wasn't yet ready to accept Jesus as His personal Savior. We talked a couple more times but I just committed to praying for him. Three weeks later, we are standing in one of the baptism lines talking to another kid from our group who was about to be baptized. I pulled Garrett aside and asked him what was up. He said that he still wasn't ready. I responded why and what are you waiting for? He paused for about 25 seconds. I could see the spiritual battle going on right in front of me before he looked me square in the eyes and said, "You know what, you're right. I need to do this. I need to give my life to Christ right now and I need to get baptized." I watched Garrett come up out of the water, he came right over to me and gave me a hug...dripping wet. I had to hold it together because guys don't cry right? For me, there is not a lot of things better in this life then to see students accept Jesus and then to witness them publicly profess Christ through baptism. In fact, four of my students got baptized and I watched them all. Over the weekend, we had hundreds of students step up through baptism and it is incredible to see God change the lives of so many young people. That is why I am involved in student ministry. Praise God!

Click on this link to watch the incredible video that our Video Team put together after the first weekend...inspiring!
http://vimeo.com/27442072

Here are a couple photo's taken off of Pastor Steven Furtick's blog...