boston commoner.

welcome home

“A couple of years ago, I was standin’ out there where all you guys are, watchin’ my dad do the same thing, thinkin’, ‘He’s nuts!’ I seriously thought he had lost his mind, or somethin…”

It’s not every day you get to watch a teenage Bostonian girl admit what she was really thinking about your church family all of those months before she got saved. Especially since it wasn’t all that flattering. But so began Felicia’s testimony, as told before the congregation of the International Baptist Church of Boston this past Sunday.

A sweet prelude to any baptism, a new believer’s testimony can touch the hearts of those floundering in the coldest waters of the mundane. Like Mandy’s story, Felicia’s was told in her own words, flavored by the fresh expression of one otherwise ‘un-churched,’ combined with local colloquialisms and accents, all bound up by the barest and boldest sincerity of newborn faith–faith in Something real; in Someone substantial; in Somebody so grand, He can’t possibly be made up, Who has left so much evidence behind and around Him that He needn’t ever be so.

It truly wasn’t long ago that she was standing on our side of the railing, watching her father be subjected to what was then the incomprehensible humility of being dunked in a tank in front of a bunch of strangers. And then being hugged for it. This past Sunday, she faced the same fate, yet willingly. Now she stood in his place, dressed in a blue vinyl robe, clutching a wad of papers in her trembling teenage hands. She began to read aloud from them. She wasn’t satisfied. After a few paragraphs, she lost her place and broke into the Taylor Unedited Version. It was no disappointment.

Her dad’s story alone is worth telling. Without going into details and histories, let’s just say that Bruce is a true, blue-collared Bostonian, a little rough around the edges, whom we wouldn’t have any other way. One of our members was a patron of one of Bruce’s market stands. Apparently, he made an impression. One day, Bruce walked into the church and said, “I’m not born again, but I know I need to be.”

If our pastor was surprised, you can imagine the reaction of his two daughters. Before accepting Christ, Bruce had never been one to mitigate his reactions or temper his emotions with love and patience. In Felicia’s own words, he was “Kinda mean, actually.”

And so she couldn’t understand why he was changing. She knew why he said he was changing, but what did it mean? The Bible, God’s Word; God Himself, His Son, Jesus Christ; death, resurrection, “walking in newness of life.” To Felicia, these terms came straight out of a book she assumed was written by “some whack-job,” something that far from merited her belief.

“But I started thinking’ about it,” she said. “I figured, I go to school and read my history book, and believe that. What reason do I have? So why can’t this be true, too?”

But historical accuracy didn’t win Felicia’s heart. Something even more obvious, more practical, and more divine drove home to her the necessity of God’s existence and interest in her life. It was her relationships.

“I stand here looking’ at my dad, and–I love him. I look at my mom, my sister…I love you guys. And I mean, why? [Science alone doesn’t explain it.] It–it doesn’t make any sense; it can’t just be a bunch of my atoms reactin,’ ‘cause it means way, way more than I…I can’t even say it. I mean…it’s the reason I’m cryin’ right now! I just love you.”

“We love you, too,” her mother said. Her mother, who’d never visited the church before, who wasn’t sure she liked the idea of her daughter getting wrapped up in this crazy religion business, who had tried her best to talk her daughter out of it. Her mother, who was now standing there, starry-eyed and glowing, beside herself, watching that daughter shed tears over the overwhelming sense of love that accompanies New Life. If that wasn’t a smile of joy on that woman’s face, I don’t know what would have been. I doubt she was regretting too much at that moment.

“And then there’s all of you guys,” Felicia continued. “You put up with me for so long, always talkin’ to me at church, and stuff, and each week I’d go home and think, ‘Yeah, church, okay, whatever.’ It’s only ‘cause of God’s grace that you would put up with me for so long.”

When her dad had gotten baptized, one of our church members, Lana, had spoken with Felicia after the service and explained that Felicia had become her burden. When later asked what she thought that meant, Felicia said, “I thought I’d given [Lana] trouble, or something.’ I thought, ‘Oh great, what’d I do?’ ”

But now she understands.

We weren’t by the lake this time. We’d arranged to use a baptismal at another church in a near-by town. The assembly hall was built to accommodate several hundred people; since we were only about 25 or 30, we ignored the pews and gathered around the railing in front of the baptismal tank. One of the blessings of smallness is, that you almost always manage to get a front-row seat. As Felicia identified herself with the death and resurrection of Christ in believers’ baptism, she was surrounded by those who love her most, saved and unsaved.

Our prayer is that those unsaved who were present were able to sense in some way the enormity and paradoxical simplicity of what had happened in Felicia’s life. Not in the baptism itself, per se; we know it’s only water and chrome, a mere picture of something we could never duplicate on our own. What we hope they see, is that Felicia has life. And that she has it, in Christ, yay, more abundantly.