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Muddy Water

On the Sunday of our recent camping trip, we decided to go to church at Bethlehem United Methodist Church near Clarksville, Tennessee. I served that church as pastor for two years and it was a joy to worship there once more and to see the people again. It was also heartwarming to watch Sam and Ben remember the place and the people. (Ruth was only two-years-old when we were there before.)

After the service, Jimmy and Miriam invited us to their home for lunch where we ate bbq and fixin’s left over from their son’s graduation party. They set before us enough food to feed twenty people and did their best to catch us up on several years-worth of Bethlehem news. At some point, they introduced us to Muddy Water by Trace Adkins.

The video for Muddy Water was filmed at Bethlehem. As Jimmy talked about what it was like to have a video crew, a well-known actor (Stephen Baldwin), and a country music star (Trace Adkins) descend upon this small country church, I got a sense of the excitement it caused. Eventually, Miriam brought out a laptop, pulled up the video, and we crowded around their dining-room table to watch.

I didn’t listen very closely to the words of the song, but the images of the church, the creek, and the baptism deeply moved me. Adult baptisms don’t happen very often in small, rural congregations. However, I could remember having officiated for at least one baptism while I was at Bethlehem.

As I remember it, after the sermon on the Sunday of the baptism the congregation walked down the road past the cemetery and stood on the bridge overlooking the creek, hymnals in hand. The person being baptized and I walked through the brush to stand on the rocky bank of the creek. I looked up from below and began the ritual:

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June 1, 2009 Posted by Doug Hagler | Grace | Church, Grace, Music | 6 Comments