Area baptisms in Ohio waterways provide watershed moments (VIDEO)

RICHLAND COUNTY — The late summer found many local believers testing the waters with their congregations. While a common spiritual ritual for generations, many have found that baptism has not watered down their faith one bit.

“My grandfather was baptized in Brubaker Creek during the 1950s,” says Pastor Hank Webb of Belmont Community Church. “Both my parents were also baptized here in 1992, and I also baptized my son at this same spot.”

Webb’s congregation held a baptism service last month at Brubaker Creek as hymns were sung by observers along the creek side. According to Webb, several churches regularly come to Brubaker Creek for baptisms.

“One time a Pentecostal church was at Brubaker Creek while we were there; another time a Freewill Baptist congregation was holding a baptism service while we were holding ours. We ended up combining our service with theirs,” Webb recalls.

“It really was a special moment to see one hundred people together not knowing which church each believer belonged to, we were just one church under the Banner of Christ.”

Reverend Webb adds, “I tell my congregation, GOD will have compassion on us and cast all our sins to the depths of the sea. Then I tell them that the Brubaker Creek goes to the Black Fork, the Black Fork to the Mohican River, the Mohican River to the Muskingum, the Muskingum to the Ohio, the Ohio River to the Mississippi River, and then the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. That is how far in a sense that GOD takes away our sin.”

Rabbi William Hallbrook of Sar Shalom Center says that the “mikvah” Hebrew for baptism, has been a Jewish ritual for thousands of years.

“Our tradition believes the “mikvah” does not save anyone, but it does help the person to walk closer to the Messiah. The Scripture talks about baptisms in the plural: leaving elementary teachings of Messiah which includes doctrine of mikvahs (baptisms) and maturing in the faith (Hebrews 6). From the Jewish perspective, it is picture of the person leaving death and coming up out of the water to new life.”

This year’s mikvah was not uncharted waters for Sar Shalom, they have held an annual mikvah at Pleasant Hill Lake since 2009 prior to the high Holy Days.

“I would say that it is a spiritually active season on the Jewish calendar right now,” says the Rabbi. “We are rededicating our lives in preparation for the high Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Succoth.”

Pastor Terry Garrett of Lexington Fusion Church had his congregation’s baptism this summer near Gatton Rocks on the Clear Fork River. The location is just west of Swank’s Claim, site of Ohio’s largest gold prospector’s claim.

Reverend Garrett believes baptism is of Biblical importance and should be pursued by new believers.

“The encounter between Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch is a great representation of how GOD will use a person the minute after they publicly proclaim Jesus in their baptism. GOD is saying to us that ‘I will blow your mind on how I will use you when your publicly confess me.”

Click on the video below of Fusion Church’s baptism service in August 2019.