At Oxford Circle Mennonite Church, we love to celebrate and share stories.  Our practices around baptism reflect this.  For several years, we offered a yearly class to middle and high school students, teaching them the contents of the Confession of Faith.  This teaching is presented through the story of Jesus and church history.  At the end of this class, the students would be invited to consider if they were ready to follow Jesus as a disciple and join the church.  The last year we held this class was just before the pandemic.  Several young people were ready to make a public commitment to following Jesus.  However, the pandemic shutdown began before we could schedule a baptism service.  

By the summer, the youth reached out to know when they could be baptized.  They wanted an outdoor baptismal service to bring the congregation back together.  These young people also wanted to be dunked, not sprinkled. We borrowed a portable baptismal pool from another church and set it up on the front lawn of our building.  We had a great outdoor service, led by our youth group, with worship music that the neighborhood could hear, and with extended family and friends of these young people coming to celebrate.  Each person being baptized shared their faith story and then climbed in the pool for their dunking.  After worshiping virtually for months, this was a great celebration of life for our congregation.

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