Sprinkle or dunk? At Byrd Presbyterian, the answer is YES! in this story by Barry Parks.
From time to time, I’ve seen baptisms at a Presbyterian church, and it’s always been by sprinkling. You know the drill — Mom and Dad bring their baby up, the pastor dips his hand in the water, puts it on the baby’s head, and the baby cries. We’ve all been there.
Well, things have changed for me. I’d been the commissioned pastor (CRE) at Byrd Presbyterian for about six months when I got an email from one of the mothers there, asking if I would baptize her two children. She said that they both wanted to be baptized in the river near the church. So her big question was, would I be willing to baptize them in the river?
Absolutely! Immersion is right there in the Book of Order (W-3.0407). So, I got busy. I met with the family, and explained what baptism means. I went over the service, and made sure they were comfortable with it. I took it to my session for approval, and they were all in.
The next question was, what does the well-dressed pastor wear in a river? Unsurprisingly, this isn’t mentioned in the Book of Order. I poked around on Amazon and found a t-shirt that said “Pastor.” Just the thing. I paired that with a black bathing suit, some water shoes, and called it done.
I consulted the Book of Common Worship and prepared a script to follow. I printed it out and put the pages inside plastic sheet protectors, which turned out to be a very smart move. Even if you’re not going to be in a river, you’re dealing with water, so be prepared, right?
Six days before the service, I got some really good news – two more children wanted to be baptized! So I called a session meeting, got their approval, met with the families, and everything clicked. The kids were okay with getting in the river, but they didn’t want to get dunked. No problem; I told them that I’d just sprinkle their heads, and they were fine with that. So now I’m doing my first baptism, for FOUR kids, all at the same time, in the river. When it rains, it pours!
Finally, the big day arrived. We worshiped in the sanctuary, and then we paused the service and drove down to the river. And we had a crowd there! Definitely a Christmas/Easter kind of crowd, when EVERYBODY shows up.
We also had rain show up — a nice, gentle sprinkle. It was like having God’s blessings shower down on us from above, and it totally worked. I was really glad that I used those plastic sheet protectors!