Inside Out Living

The last two years I’ve had the privilege of leading students from our church on a mission trip to Mexico. Both times I have been able to participate in a baptismal service with our sister church. What a blessing it has been to baptize some of our Spanish- speaking brothers and sisters. This experience has impressed upon me the common unity we have with Christians who speak a different language. Last year, after a couple of times of hearing our translator, Paul, translate my declaration of their baptism, I began to, with some difficulty, baptize them in Spanish.

I realized that it did not matter what language I was speaking in performing the baptism. I was baptizing a child of God and recognizing their membership into the universal Church. For no matter where or when Christian baptism takes place, “we are all one body, we have the same Spirit, and we have all been called to the same glorious future. There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and there is only one God and Father, who is over us all and in us all and living through us all” (Eph. 4:4-6).