Dear Pastor Bubba and the Mars Hill staff,

I just wanted to thank you for the incredible service you held at Mars Hill Ballard this past Sunday and to let you know how much it meant to me and to my family to be able to be a part of it. Our family served as Greeters at the 11:00 service – it was such a joy to us to be able to stand together as a family and welcome people into the service, wishing them a happy Easter and helping them to feel loved and welcomed! Then we got into the service and we were completely overwhelmed with emotion – the three of us wept through most of the service – the songs, the message from Pastor Mark and the baptisms just overwhelmed us with tears of joy.

I have been a Christian for 28 years and I can tell you honestly that I have never experienced such a celebration as we did this past Sunday at Mars Hill. Watching the people come forward to be baptized on the day we were celebrating Jesus’ resurrection felt like we had stepped right back into the New Testament Book of Acts….I had attended the Good Friday service (my family had other obligations and couldn’t attend) and experienced such an incredible appreciation for what Christ suffered on my behalf and really felt so very overwhelmed by His love for His people all weekend long. So by the time I got to church on Sunday morning I was ready to celebrate His resurrection and triumph over Satan, sin and death. But I never expected to be as blessed as I ended up being by that service – and I just wanted to let you know what you and the people of Mars Hill did for me and for my family that day.

As I said, I’ve been a Christian for 28 years. I was baptized as an infant I think mostly out of some sort of superstition and not out of any faith on my parents part as they weren’t Christians. I never went to church as a child and my parents never spoke about God or about a faith in Jesus – but for some reason I was baptized as a baby. I came to Christ my junior year at the UW after a dramatic transformation took place in my life. I had been an atheist for most of my life – but my junior year I ended up getting pregnant, having an abortion and then completely fell apart emotionally at what had become of my life. My boyfriend at the time had a Christian mom and to try to calm me down he started reading to me out of the Psalms. I felt like he was telling me about the home and the Father that I had been longing for my entire life. Soon after that , I found myself starting to read the Bible and I ended up at a college retreat sponsored by University Presbyterian Church in Seattle – it was on that weekend retreat after reading John Stott’s “Basic Christianity” that I asked Christ into my heart. The transformation in my attitude and my actions was dramatic and I longed to tell everyone about what Jesus had done in my life. The college group was holding baptisms at Greenlake later that month and I desperately wanted to participate. But the college pastor told me that since I had been baptized as a baby by my parents, I couldn’t get “re-baptized”….he talked about denying the impact of my first baptism and somehow “recrucifying Christ” all over again by getting re-baptized. I was devastated for not being able to make a public proclamation of my new-found faith – and also felt horribly guilty for even having wanted to be baptized when it was so obviously wrong by my new church’s standards. I eventually put this longing out of my mind – but it stayed in my heart always as something that I wished I could have done.

After having my own children, my husband and I baptized both of them – also at UPC since that is the church where we were members. It was the thing that all the young parents were doing and I felt like it was something that I had to do as a Christian in that church environment. Years later, my youngest daughter Callin came to faith in Christ and she (like her mom had) wanted to get baptized. But she was told the same message that I had been told so many years earlier. She couldn’t since she had already been baptized as a baby.

To make a long story shorter – our family ended up finally feeling like we needed to find a new church. The Presbyterian Church just wasn’t a fit for us – at least in the theology they were expressing from the pulpit….there wasn’t any church discipline, the sermons were topical always and not at all challenging – and never out of the Scriptures. It seemed like they cared more about keeping the congregation happy and donating then they did about challenging them to be true disciples of Jesus Christ. We ended up being led by God to come to Mars Hill – and there we found the church we had always longed to be a part of….a church where the Scriptures are preached and honored, where discipleship is taken seriously and the members are challenged to live obediently and repentantly, where church discipline is carried out. We’ve been at Mars Hill every Sunday since October and just completed the membership class to join the church.

So that brings me to last Sunday – as we stood in worship at the 11:00 service I knew this was my opportunity to get baptized…Pastor Bubba had even said, “If you are a Christian and you’ve never been baptized, this is your chance…..” I was nervous since I had technically been baptized as a baby – but I knew that Mars Hill supported believers’ baptism and I so desperately wanted to get baptized….even if it was 28 years after the fact of accepting Christ into my heart. I was really nervous…making some excuses about having on my nice Easter outfit and having to go out to Easter Brunch after the service with my parents…what would they think if I showed up all wet? But I really felt God moving me to go forward. Just then my daughter turned to me and said, “Mom – I want to be baptized….but I’m too afraid to go up there by myself. Will you go with me?” “Go with you? Callin – I won’t just go with you – I’ll get baptized with you! I asked my husband if he wanted to go up with us – he said he wasn’t feeling led to go – he, too, had been baptized as a child – but he encouraged my daughter and I to go forward. Together we kicked off our shoes and went forward holding hands. It was an incredible experience for us. Our hearts were pounding – we were nervous but so excited. I stepped into the pool and my daughter was encouraged to “get close to watch your mom get baptized”. She was really touched by how encouraged she was to feel a part of my baptism. After I came out of the water, Pastor Brad turned to me and asked me if I wanted to help baptize my daughter. I couldn’t believe that I was going to get to participate in my daughter’s baptism like this. What an incredible joy it was to hold her as she went down into the water and came back out again. As she was baptized, her baptismal verse that I had chosen for her as a baby 18 years ago just kept going over and over in my mind: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me”. (Gal. 2:20) We couldn’t stop crying and just held on tightly to each other as we stepped out of the pool.

What a difference it has made in both of our hearts since that time. God has done a work of grace in both of us – causing us to feel like brand new Christians in some strange way. This public declaration has been long coming for both of us – the burden and the heartache we have both carried in not being able to participate in this most holy action has been such a weight to carry – more than either of us ever realized. We have been so delighted to find our faith refreshed, invigorated with some sense of the newness of Christ’s presence with us and the gratitude of all He has done on our behalf.

My daughter is now witnessing on her Cornish campus with a renewed vigor – even allowing her baptism to be the topic she uses to introduce people to her faith in Christ. Everywhere I go I share with people the joy that I feel at being able to fulfill this long-awaited proclamation and to use my recent baptism to tell them about who Christ is and what He has done in my life.

You have truly made a difference in both our lives by allowing two Christians to finally be baptized as believers in Christ. Bless you for this step of faith you have taken and for your willingness to put yourselves out for so many who wanted on this particular Lord’s Resurrection Day to proclaim their faith in Him and their desire to be identified with Him in His death and in His glorious resurrection.

He is truly risen and you and the staff of Mars Hill have helped to mark this particular Easter Sunday forever in my heart.

Thank you for this gracious gift you’ve given to me and to my daughter.

Gratefully,
Tracy Stone (and my daughter Callin Regan)

To check out the recorded testimonies from Easter Sunday go here!