Mission Canada

A PUBLIC FAITH: PIVOTAL MOMENTS ON OUR JOURNEY WITH GOD

BRIAN EGERT

There are times in our shared journey when going public with our faith is a pivotal moment in our walk with God. Can you remember when you first yielded your will and life to Him and embraced a personal faith in Christ? Your initial passion reflected the incredible joy and peace the Lord gifted you during your salvation experience. You just wanted everyone to know. You wanted to shout from the top of a mountain and post on every social media channel, “I am a new creation and a child of God. I have been delivered from my bondages and selfishness. I am freed, forgiven and cleansed from my sin. I have found a new purpose in my life.”

Over time, that initial glow diminishes, and we become more selective and discerning about where and with whom we share. Often, later in our faith journey, we must reboot the passion by participating in “training” classes on sharing our faith. We may even become reactive in our response as we wait for the right “opportunity” or for others to observe that we are followers “by virtue of our actions and deeds alone.” Some stop sharing their faith entirely due to the fear or potential fallout of losing a relationship or feeling the overt societal or workplace pressure to “just keep your faith to yourself.” One person once remarked to me, “My faith is private.” My gentle counter-response was, “No, your faith is personal, but our witness is always public.”

In 2023, our PAOC churches recorded 15,790 conversion stories. ¹ Wow! Each story represented an event with eternal impact on the person and their family, friends and immediate circle of influence. That averages about 12.9 conversions per church, congregation or disciple-making community in the PAOC. What if we developed a ratio and considered how many people in your congregation it takes to see one person come to Christ? You can do the math! The crucial time where these stories come alive is when we get to watch new believers take the next step in their discipleship by following the Lord in baptism. 7 - For the Web - Mission Canada - Landing Page - iStock-1399584514

According to the 2023 ACLR report, PAOC churches reported 8,902 water baptisms. ² Each candidate decided to make a public declaration of their faith and share their allegiance and commitment to follow Jesus for the rest of their lives. In most cultures, this public display is what solidifies their personal faith—that they belong to the local and universal church. In many restricted contexts, this ordinance is practised with believers in secret but makes it official—the candidate is now recognized as a believer.

As a local pastor, I remarked that obeying the call to discipleship by following the Lord in baptism was the pivotal point to strengthening a believer’s faith. It often increased their awareness of spiritual warfare and, with huge strides, propelled them toward becoming a disciplined follower of Jesus. Also, baptism in the Spirit, evidenced by tongues, empowered them with a renewed passion and power to be effective in witness. Personally, the summer before Grade 9 was when I got baptized, filled with the Spirit, and called to ministry. It changed the trajectory of my life.

Baptism by immersion is key to making disciples. In Matthew 28:19-20, Matthew records Jesus’s command to us to “make disciples … baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” As we are making disciples, the step of obedience in water baptism as a public confession is crucial to teaching disciples to obey all His commands. In Mark 16:15-16, Mark shares Jesus’s pre-ascension commission: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Jesus also encourages us that signs will follow those who believe. Luke 24:45-49 and Acts 1:8 remind us that the commission included the empowering of the Holy Spirit. We are to bear witness to these things and wait until we have been clothed with power from on high! John 20:21-22 affirms that we are divinely commissioned and empowered by the Holy Spirit: “‘As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

Each baptism story is a statement of the power of God to transform lives. Each candidate has a name. Vanessa, a former tent city resident, came to faith through the ministry of our Mission Canada worker in Peterborough, Ont., and now has a home and a future. Trevor Gingerich facilitated six baptisms at Humber College in Toronto. Five were international students who had to weigh the potential ramifications of their decision to get baptized because of their family members and friends in their home countries. We are seeing churches record more baptisms than usual, such as at Glad Tidings in Burlington, Ont., and Elim church in Saskatoon, Sask. Pastor Blake Davidson at Willowdale Pentecostal Church in Toronto, Ont., has seen 262 baptisms since November 2022, mostly new Canadians from a restricted country. This has led to global church planting and transformation in extended families.

God is up to something in our PAOC church family. We are beginning to see the Lord bring people to living faith, and they are going public and starting the journey to become fully devoted followers of Christ. I am reminded of Acts 8:36 (NLT), where the eunuch exclaimed, “Look! There’s some water! Why can’t I be baptized?”

Brian Egert has been PAOC’s Mission Canada director since 2012. Mission Canada serves to minister to the missional gaps in Canada—the Acts 1:8 “Samarias.” He and his wife, Beverly, have three adult children and two grandchildren. They live in Burlington, Ont.

This article appeared in the October/November/December 2024 issue of testimony/Enrich, a quarterly publication of The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. © 2024 The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. Photos © istockphoto.com.