Evangelism Conference hosts baptisms for Mobile-area churches

As the Monday-evening session of the Alabama Baptist State Evangelism Conference wrapped up and the crowd filed out of the sanctuary of Dauphin Way Baptist Church, Mobile, Justin Eldridge stood just out of sight in a back hallway, dripping wet but grinning broadly.
  
He’d just been baptized, along with his aunt and uncle, Bilinda and Alan Rollins.
   
“Last September, I was really upset — I had just had a fight with my aunt. I went over to the house of a friend I really look up to,” said Eldridge, a member of First Baptist Church, Citronelle, in Mobile Baptist Association. “He and I sat down and talked for a long time in the backyard.”
   
There, with the encouragement of his friend, Eldridge prayed to receive Christ. He said he hasn’t been the same since.
   
“It’s got its ups and downs, but I’m trying to live by God’s will,” Eldridge said.
   
Sammy Gilbreath, director of the office of evangelism for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said the baptisms — a first for the annual conference — served as a real reminder of what God has called us to do — share the gospel.
   
“My biggest fear is that so many of us have been saved for so long that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be lost,” Gilbreath told the nearly 1,200 present at the conference. “I pray we will never lose the joy of celebrating what it’s like to be saved and baptized.”
   
The pastors of three Mobile-area churches — totaling 15 newly baptized members among them — took on the challenge of reminding Alabama Baptists of the joy Gilbreath highlighted. And all of them, in turn, took part in an experience rare to their congregation — baptism in a baptistry.
   
“For one reason or another, all three churches are currently without baptistries,” Gilbreath explained. First, Citronelle, lost its sanctuary to fire in 2003, Cypress Shores Baptist Church lost the use of its baptistry to hurricane damage and Sonrise Baptist Church, a new church plant, simply hasn’t gotten one yet.
   
“I wondered if some people might not understand why we were having baptisms as part of the conference, but basically we are simply loaning these churches a baptistry. The ones being baptized are being baptized by their local pastors into their local churches,” Gilbreath said. “I don’t think it’s ever wrong to celebrate a birth into the kingdom of God. It was a fitting way to close out each of the sessions — bookends to illustrate the whole reason we were here.”
   
Pastor Max Dempsey of First, Citronelle, baptized his daughter, Raelea, on Monday night in addition to Eldridge and his family. 
   
Pastor Ric Camp of Sonrise Baptist baptized seven during the course of Tuesday, two of whom were a stepfather and stepdaughter. And Pastor Randy Johnson of Cypress Shores Baptist baptized four on Monday — three young girls with newfound faith and an adult, Bonnie Roberts, who simply wanted to take that step of obedience. 
   
“It’s so exciting, getting baptized here at this conference,” Roberts said. “I can’t even describe what it’s like. God is so wonderful.”