Sunday, December 7, 2008

Baptisms

The Jesus House gained a reputation in the early days as a place that was most willing to baptise people. Not all para-church ministries, especially youth oriented ministries were willing to baptise people. The Jesus House's reputation was deserved. We believed it was important to baptise a person as soon as the decision was made to become a Christian. The Christian Church connection and the Jesus Movement of the early 70's were influences. Baptism was identified as a first step for anyone becoming a Christian. Most of the Jesus House baptisms occurred on Saturday night after the concerts at which pointe we treked up to use the baptistry at Highview Christian Church. After we started the annual Conglomerate retreat, we baptised quite a few people in the lake at camp. I have a partial list of baptisms from the early years. No one kept track of all the baptisms in 1971 so my official list begins January, 1972 and ends in 1976. There are 125 people on the list. I will not list all the names here out of respect for privacy, but I will mention two people who, in my opinion, gave up their privacy years ago!
Christopher Adams - March 11, 1972
Rick Mapes - June 14, 1972
1972 was a very good year for baptising future Jesus House leaders!
I believe Rick Mapes might have taken over the duties of keeping track of the baptism list so he may have some additional names.
If you were baptised at the Jesus House and would like to find out the date, email me at tfishh@gmail.com
Dale, your name is not on my list. Sorry.
As a father, I look back on those baptisms with a slightly different perspective. Many of the people we baptised were high school and college students who were baptised without their parents being present. At the time I thought nothing of it. If either of my children made the decision to do something that important without me, I would be excited, but also disappointed. I wonder how many parents we disappointed. We had very few complaints. Well, time and experience gives insight.

This Week In History: Artists Who Performed at the Jesus House the Fourth Week of November
1971 - John Gould
1972 - Al Green (No, not that Al Green, the other Al Green. The one who helped write Get the Sin out of Cincinnati.)
1973 - Rick Marksberry, Stan Carter, Al Green (Same Al Green)
1974 - Richard Mullins (He wasn't called Rich in those days.)
1975 - Rick & Hodgy
1976 - Karen & Jenny (aka Covenant)
1977 - Share-it (An evening devoted to Jesus House people sharing their gifts.)
1978 - Showbread
1979 - Steve Silcox
1980 - Judah
1981 - Rising Hope
1982 - Ted Brickler
1983 - Winning Edge

Fifth Saturday! November is another month with an occasional Saturday night. The following are artists who performed for one of those rare fifth Saturdays.
1974 - Randy Moody
1975 - Carl, Larry & Chuck
1980 - Beth Cook

Jesus House Reflections & Memories
I would like to include memories from others in this blog. If you have something you would like to share about the Jesus House, send it to me via email, tfishh@gmail.com
I reserve the right to edit due to space or bad writing...but would love to include your memories.

2 comments:

Christopher said...

No permission required- That's a day to shout out loud! --Christopher

revfish said...

Welcome to the blog.