BAPTISM + MEMBERSHIP

MEMBERSHIP

As long as you attend a local church regularly, why join?

Unlike membership in most community organizations or retail establishments, becoming a member of a local church signifies something deeper, something fundamental to our spiritual lives. Membership makes possible a community life that could never be experienced by a collection of “attendees.” Such a community is marked by promises of mutual care, willingness to resolve conflict rather than leave, and banding together to achieve kingdom purposes both within and beyond the local fellowship (Acts 2:42-47).

If you want to be part of such a community rather than just a spectator, active church membership is for you.

Interested?

If you are ready to take the next step, contact the church office at info@yarrowalliance.org.

BAPTISM

We deeply cherish baptismal services here at Yarrow Alliance where people identify and participate in this sacred ceremony as commanded by Jesus. For baptism in Jesus – is one of God’s established signs of the Jesus Community. Stated differently – baptism when expressed is intended to communicate that the person has accepted “their acceptance in Jesus” by grace through faith so that they are being identified publicly as part of Christ’s body, the church. For us at Yarrow Alliance, church then is not a place that one attends – church is a community to which one belongs.

One misconception people often have as they observe a baptismal service is that they think that the person getting baptized has somehow gotten super serious about spirituality and in so doing they have somehow magically got their “spiritual act together”. They’ve figured out how to shed or avoid all of life’s failures and struggles of sin and pain. This is not the case. Biblically, baptism is about participating by faith in Jesus’ perfect life & obedience, death, burial and resurrection. We believe at Yarrow Alliance Church that the good news, the gospel, is what God has done for us as sinners (like all of us) in Jesus Christ. Baptism then is not a demonstration “that we’ve got it together”, but that we believe Jesus is God’s “Got it together” Son, and in believing in him, “we have life in his name” in this life, and especially in the life to come!

Baptism is the wonderful mystery that as we go under the water our (old) selves die before God due to Jesus death, and as we rise out of the water, we rise as new persons whose identities are ‘hidden with Christ in God’ Col. 3:3.

If you are ready to be baptized, contact the church office at info@yarrowalliance.org.