Cottage Hill sees 51 baptisms after DiscipleNow

It started out just like most DiscipleNow (D-Now) weekends do. Students in the youth ministry at Cottage Hill Baptist Church, Mobile, met at the church and departed for their host homes to begin the weekend. They had the traditional small groups led by college students, daytime fun activities and sessions     with the main speaker. The only thing that was different from most of the other D-Now weekends was that at the end of the weekend 51 students were baptized and 18 announced a leading into full-time Christian service. 
   
“We were praying for 20 decisions, and God just blew that out of the water,” said Mark Rudd, junior high student pastor at Cottage Hill Baptist. “I told Scott (Krupa), our senior high student pastor, that we don’t even know how to pray yet.”
   
Rudd attributes these results to a new ministry at Cottage Hill called the Watchmen ministry. “Months out, we had hundreds of people praying for the weekend 24-7. They were praying for specific things, and God answered.”
   
Krupa and Rudd called the weekend “Breaking Free.” They chose the theme to target the students’ hearts and lead them to a deeper level of intimacy with the Lord.
   
Kolie Norman was one of the 51 students who made a profession of faith during the weekend and was baptized the following Sunday. She said “breaking free” was a reality for her.
   
“Breaking Free was the perfect name for the weekend,” she said. “I know the moment it happened, when I broke free. I was sitting in the service and felt God tugging on my heart. I got saved, and my life has really changed,” she noted.
   
Norman was one of 44 professions of faith during the weekend. Seven other students made their decisions public that weekend and were baptized during the Sunday morning service as well. 
   
Norman said the baptismal service was a special moment for her.
   
“When I got baptized, when I came out of the water, it was really like I was reborn,” Norman described. 
   
“I wasn’t just being dunked in the water to show salvation; it was like my old life was washed completely away and since that moment I ­really have been walking a different path. I feel like my whole life has matured. I grew up in the matter of a weekend. I’m free of the world’s expectations,” she said.
   
Keith Thomas, pastor of Cottage Hill Baptist, said the baptismal service had a great impact on the entire church family. “This just intensified the hunger level of the whole body to not want to miss what God is doing in the life of our church at large,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many testimonies I’ve heard from members saying they’ve never seen anything like this in their lives.
   
“Seeing that many make decisions for Christ and then 18 to follow the Lord vocationally, it just lifts the ceiling off the whole church family,” Thomas said.
   
Thuan Mai was one of the 18 who expressed a leading into full-time ministry. “Before the weekend started, I asked God to help me break free from whatever I needed to and to not miss out on what He had for me,” Mai said. “God really spoke to me that Saturday night, and I knew I couldn’t fight it any longer.”
   
Mai said he yielded to the call to ministry during the invitation on Saturday night. “I had been thinking about this for a year or two, and I know now that God was drawing me to devote my life to full-time ministry,” he said. “I used to make excuses, but not anymore. God opened the door for me that night, and now I’m committed to being a worship leader.”
   
Thomas said the youth ministry and lay leadership teams were the foundations of the student responses. “It thrills me that we have an incredible lay leadership team and an unbelievably gifted and godly student pastor leadership team,” he noted. 
   
“That combination has revolutionized our student ministry. The results of this weekend are just evidence of God’s hand on us and a great future ahead of us.”