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Celebrate your life in Christ!​
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At Riverside Community Church, we believe water baptism is a celebration of your decision to follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Just as wedding rings are a public declaration of a marriage covenant, water baptism is the outward declaration of the covenant God makes with us. We believe that baptism is meant to unite and not divide people, as your church, we would like to stand with you as you publicly declare the impact of God’s grace in your life that leads you to surrender your life to the Lord.
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Why do I need to be Baptized?
Baptism is a beautiful symbol of how God’s grace leads us to a new life through receiving Jesus’ sacrificial gift through faith. This faith leads us to what we call repentance, our unashamed confession to leave our old way of life and to follow Jesus. Throughout the New Testament, We see Jesus, the apostles, and the early church practicing baptism. When someone would repent of their sins and turn to Jesus, they would then immediately be baptized as an outward sign of the inward change that Jesus had done in their hearts. When you step out of the water, you are letting the world know that you have walked into a new life of faith in Jesus Christ and that you are committing to follow Jesus down a new path. This symbol tells a story of the death, burial, and resurrection that Jesus experienced on our behalf and how we experience a new life with Jesus. Likewise, we see the picture of how Jesus has washed away our sins through His sacrifice.
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At Riverside, we are pleased to baptize people in different modes and seasons as a way of bringing unity and celebrating God’s activity in our lives. We baptize infants and young children as parents claim God’s active grace in the world and declare to raise their children to experience that grace for themselves. We celebrate baptism with those who have entered into a new life with Jesus as a public way of celebrating them experiencing God’s saving grace. Likewise, we celebrate as people enter into new seasons of life and remember their baptism as a way of marking God’s sanctifying grace in their journey. Understanding the first-century roots of baptism in Mikvah and the traditions that have developed throughout church history, we baptize through immersion, sprinkling, or pouring depending on the need of the individual being baptized.
Most importantly, baptism is a story of God’s gracious work in the world, and Jesus’ sacrifice meant to unite people. At Riverside, our Pastors or church leadership would be happy to have a conversation about any questions or concerns you might have because we desire to live in fellowship with each other, united by God’s Spirit.
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Matthew 28:19, Acts 2:38, 8:35-38, Romans 6:1-4
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