Engage Community Church

LISTEN to Zach’s powerful story!!!

Cuyler Paine

Zach Brigante

This past Sunday June 6th was a beautiful day at Engage.  We ended our time together with a celebration of baptism.  Cuyler Paine and Zach Brigante both followed Jesus in Baptism as a statement of their faith and trust in Jesus.  This was our second baptism service at Engage.  The first one was on Jan. 10th. You can scroll down to watch video and view pictures from our celebration in January.  As we baptized Cuyler and Zach I once again watched many of you.  You were moved to tears and some of you tough guys even choked up a bit (I saw you :).  I was reflecting on this again this past week. Why is baptism such a powerful symbol? Why does this symbol evoke such strong emotions deep within?  I think it’s because baptism is such an intimate and vulnerable expression.  Each person we baptize read their story of how Christ has been at work in their lives healing and shaping and freeing them in some way.  Each time these stories are laced raw honesty, meaning, and hope.  On Sunday Cuyler showed us pictures of him praying with his counselor at Summer camp as this young guy of 9 yrs. old told his creator that he trusts Jesus as his friend and savior.  The child-like faith of Cuyler Paine is a reminder to all of us of our need to approach God as a loving Father with innocence and vulnerability.

When Zach Brigante read his story many us welled with tears as we heard this story of hurt and loss, pain and emptiness.  But his story didn’t end there.  Zach’s story moved from void or loss or regret–to hope.   Hope that something better and fuller has been found through knowing and trusting the Creator who came to be with us in Jesus. I watched you grimace as you identified with the emptiness or darker sides of this story.  I was moved as you teared up or broke a smile when Zach spoke of redemption breaking through layers of doubt and skepticism or hurt and loss.  Why is this?  Many of you didn’t even personally know Zach.  The reason is simple. We want reasons to hope. When we find corners of this world where hope wins over our cynicism it moves us in deep ways.  My hope is that Engage is a community where hope is always winning.  Not fake, syrupy, conjured sentimentalism living in refusal to see reality.  No–more like the refusal to give in to the cynical impulses that so quickly leap, squelching our imaginations of faith.  There is a reason why Jesus was always pointing to little children when teaching about trust and faith.  Children aren’t cynics. They believed God could work in ways that are befitting of, um, God.  They have the faith to dream of God-shaped possibilities in this world.  May hope increase and fear be extinguished as we continue to get to know the ultimate source of hope–Jesus Christ.

Listen to Zach’s story in his own words zach-story_baptism

I leave you with Zach’s powerful story. In his own words:

I was asked to answer two questions, “Why do you want to be baptized” and “What does it mean to you?” Why I want to get baptized has more to do with not wanting to be baptized really. I was raised in the church, a mega church in Southern California where my mother attended since I was very young. She taught kindergarten there and we would often attend more than once a week. She would read me the Bible before bed, and she would have me pray.

The honest truth is that I don’t remember much of anything from what she read me and I spent most of my time at church avoiding actually going to a service. I would often fall asleep as my mother read to me, and I never really understood why we went to church or why we believed in God. I did believe in God though, regardless of lack of reason to. I would be afraid of dark rooms and posters with eyes, and I would pray to God for protection and I honestly believed it.

When I was around 7 years old I began to question what we were doing every week going to this place and why we were praying and what it all really meant. My mother attempted to assuage my questions, but the people she asked rarely had satisfactory answers, or if they did I would find more questions in the answers I was given. I fought her for many years about going to church, and I finally stopped going around 13.

I felt that it didn’t affect my life much, not being a Christian. Nothing really seemed to change other than I didn’t go to church any more. It was easy at that point because we had just moved away from Southern California to Baltimore, Maryland and we did not have a church yet. I developed an interesting habit of visiting churches with my mother and talking to the pastor afterward, asking him the questions that had led me from God. They rarely had answers that satisfied.

And so began my little crusade, to poke holes in the Christian faith with the use of logic and the understanding that most believers did not know why they believed, and they didn’t care. I would ask the right questions to people who had never really thought about it before, and soon they would be drowning in doubt. I questioned students in college, high-school, pastors, and teachers. For seven years I wandered the spiritual wilderness searching for the one thing I desired over all else, control and power.

In those seven years, I became Pagan searching for the power that the supernatural supposedly holds. I studied witchcraft understanding that the Bible talks of abilities held by humans who did not believe in God, abilities that I desired. I soon found witchcraft to be full of self delusion, just as I thought Christianity was. I became Agnostic, understanding that I believed that there was a force in the world, something beyond and above us and with us that guided and protected us, but acknowledging that I did not know what that was. I continued to ask questions, and I continued to find no answers.

When I was 19 I started dating a girl who  had a nice grudge toward Christians as arrogant and judgmental people. She owned a set of books called the “Left Behind Series” which I had heard about before and was curious about. I loved to read and devoured many books in those days. In these books, God gives his believers abilities, persuasion, discernment, and protection.

My lust for power led me to be curious about the Bible, to see if these abilities were really given to God’s followers and how valid they were. I began meeting with a friend in College, asking him the questions that came up to me when I began reading Genesis for what to me felt to be the first time. He didn’t have answers either, but he encouraged me to keep reading, and affirmed me that my questions were valid ones and some day they would be answered. He gave me a book called, “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel, and a few weeks later I failed out of college.

I finished “The Case for Christ” just before I was forced to move out of my dorm, and on a cold night of December 19th, 2006 I gave up. I admitted defeat. I decided that I was tired from running from something and pretending that something didn’t exist when I know in my heart that it did.

In my mind, I can never recall ever being baptized, and I have always understood it as something those other people do to get a Godly experience. Why would I need that, when I have God inside of me at all times. I would justify not doing it, by saying that it wasn’t necessary. However, I would continue to feel that I should, because the Bible says you should, but I didn’t understand that until I went back to college and learned about what the Bible really says. It has taken me almost 4 years to get the courage to give up control of my life to Him, and to you, the people in my life that know Him. To trust, that somehow I cannot be the one to guide my life.

Baptism, to me, is surrendering again. Giving God control, and admitting to Him, to myself, and to all of you that I love you. I love you all, all humans and all people. I want to be your friend, I want to trust you, I want to give my heart to you. But I am afraid, afraid of failure and rejection, and of being alone. Baptism is facing my fear. I want to be baptized because I am tired of being afraid of community and friendship and love. I want God to wash the fear from me. I can do this.
–Zach Brigante

Baptism from January 2010

Mike Greene Baptism @ Engage from Engage Community Church on Vimeo.

Amy Greene Baptism @ Engage from Engage Community Church on Vimeo.

Mitchell Greene Baptism @ Engage from Engage Community Church on Vimeo.

Evelyn Cruzat Baptism @ Engage from Engage Community Church on Vimeo.

Elijah Hyndman Baptism @ Engage from Engage Community Church on Vimeo.

Desirae Moyer Baptism @ Engage from Engage Community Church on Vimeo.

Anna Jane Friess Baptism @ Engage from Engage Community Church on Vimeo.