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BY MELISSA LAUBER
UMCONNECTION STAFF

The 100-member congregation of Mt. Carmel UMC in New Market met at the banks of the river to pray June 8 and added 27 new members to its congregation, 10 of them baptized by immersion.

The pastor, the Rev. Jenny Smith, is delighted, but not surprised.

"You can feel the Spirit among this congregation. It's the story they share. Everything that's happening is an act of God," she said. "Acts 2 is about what God does. We have to make ourselves open to what God is going to accomplish."

The idea for this service of baptism illustrates that, Smith said.

The idea was not hers, but came from Alex Mortorff, a teenager in the church, who came to her last fall and said he "wanted to be baptized in the river like Jesus."

The congregation had just completed a prayer journey. During worship, instead of a sermon, they were invited to walk through stations set up on the church grounds. One of the stations shared the Gospel story and asked "How shall we respond?"

The next station offered an answer, "Repent and be baptized." This answer struck a chord in Mortorff, who is a "phenomenal kid who has a connection with the Lord," Smith said.

He approached her and asked to be baptized. When Smith suggested that the river would be too cold in November, he agreed to wait until spring.

The congregation announced plans for the service a few months ago. "It has grown into an enormous blessing," Smith said. "We don't know where all these new people are coming from. God is bringing them."

On June 8 at Pine Cliff Park in Frederick, eight teens joined the church, two were baptized, six more were confirmed. A fourth- and fifth- grader asked their Sunday School teachers if they might be baptized. Four adults also expressed a desire and had their children baptized. Many others renewed their baptisms in the cool water on the 101-degree day. It was a great symbol of God's spiritual refreshment.

"God is working in Alex's life," Smith said. "We just asked ourselves how we can extend this as an opportunity to the rest of the congregation and the community."

During the service, Smith preached on Martin Luther's daily practice of waking up each morning, placing his hand upon his head and reminding himself, "I am baptized."

"Doing so would impact how he would live his whole day," she said. "Each morning he claimed who he was."

Smith and Mortorff are convinced that being baptized by immersion, "like Jesus was," will etch a memory into people's souls.

"The Spirit lives in us. Each of us lives as a child of God," Smith said. "That's what we celebrate in our baptism and that's what we reaffirm when we remember our baptism."

A few days before the baptism Smith and her lay leader, Scott Clawson, went to the river to practice. "We didn't want to lose anybody," she joked.

But stepping outside how church is usually done can be risky, she acknowledged. The congregation's willingness to take these risks is what is drawing new members, she's convinced.

"We've found that if people are given authentic opportunities to respond to what God is doing in their lives, that becomes transformational," Smith said. "Mt. Carmel is willing to give almost anything a try and see how it can change somebody's life."

Not everything works, she admits. "We're far from perfect. It's difficult being a growing church because there are constantly growing pains; there's constantly a sense of loss. What we did last year might not work because there are new and different people."

But the willingness to change is bringing growth.

During the past five years, 70 people have joined the church.

The week before the commitment service, the congregation voted to build a new ministry center on their site.

Their neighbors sold them an acre of ground for $10, the same price the church paid for their property 150 years ago.

The new $2 million center, which will be attached to the historic chapel, will triple the church's space.

The church hopes to break ground the day after Easter in 2009 and worship in the new space that Christmas.

"It's a remarkable, crazy, hopeful act," Smith said. Just like baptism.