Baptism 2 - Small Group 8/14/07

I am reluctant to write anything about small group right now because I just got off work and am getting tired. I will, however, push forward, through the sluggish laziness and reflect on what happened last night.
I tried, last night, to begin a practice that has been very apparently lost in translation during this past year: starting on time. All of you other small group leaders out there can probably relate, punctuality begins to loose its important once people begin to become familiar with one another. One thing that spurred me on to re-emphasize this practice was something that pastor Neil touched on at church. He said something along the lines of "If only we could be as punctual to church as we are to our business meetings." It was really funny because it is true. How lackadaisical we become in the presence of such a glorious God. How much we take for granted the opportunities we get to worship Him or study His word. Its funny because there are those who are so serious about being there that they might be 15-20 minutes early and then there are those, well, I guess that don't come at all sometimes. Why can't there be an even medium??? Well...I guess I am done now, but the whole starting on time thing failed miserably last night but I hope that it will get better.
During our discussion time we talked about Baptism, of course and I feel that it went pretty well. I wanted to bring up some verses that others had brought up to me when they found out that I have not been baptized. With these verses, however, it was not my goal to rebuttal them with my own argument; if anything I agree with the verses in the context that they should be understood in. Instead, I was just offering the other side of spectrum, playing "devil's advocate" you might say, something I very often do with my group.
One of the verses was when Jesus was baptized in Matthew Three. John said to Jesus, " you should be doing this to me?" and then Jesus said, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Now, I am no bible scholar, but could Jesus be saying we must do THIS (as in the baptism of Jesus) to fulfill all righteousness? Some would say that he is saying both: that they should do it then and take it as a command. I don't buy it. People don't say one thing and mean two different things. I don't take this as a reason not to get baptized; I just don't think that we should use this verse to backup why to get baptized. Some would say we should do it because Jesus did it and that is good enough. Don't buy that either. Those very same people that say, "we should do it because Jesus did", can't even follow his greatest commandment, "love thy neighbor."
We also talked about the great commission as a verse to back up baptize. I really had to hold it back on that one. The commandment of the "great commission is not to GO, not to BAPTIZE, but to......MAKE DISCIPLES. If we are just going around baptizing everyone with discipleship we are castrating our church and setting it up for failure. That is why I don’t believe in guilting people into getting baptized, as some are trying to do to me :)
I am not trying to sound mean or harsh in my approach, I just want to speak from my heart and to be as real as possible.
I have decided that I do want to get baptized but unfortunately I have decided not to do it at the beach. I want to be a part of what my church does, but I just really feel that these past two sermons and other things that have transpired have all been one big plug to get as many people to do this as possible. Don't like it, don't believe it is right. I still love my church and still want my minister to baptize me but I want it to be genuine and from my heart, not some surrendering compliance.
Blessings.