NEW YORK — The Albany campus of LifeChurch.tv, one of the nation’s fastest growing churches, welcomed Sunday five new members to the body of Christ during the church’s first baptismal ceremony.
“It was very exciting,” Pastor Josh Brower, 30, the campus pastor who performed the baptism, told the Christian Post. “People were cheering and whistling and giving high-fives to each other.”
Brower said he hoped people watching the baptism would be “thrilled to see members added to the body of Christ” and noted that the Albany campus will hold baptism every three months.
Around 200 people attended the service on Sunday with many coming through word-of-mouth invitations from friends and co-worker, according to Brower.
The Albany location is the most recent church campus added to LifeChurch.tv, a multiple-campus church that first started in Edmund, Oklahoma. LifeChurch.tv was named Most Innovative Church by Outreach magazine at the beginning of this year. The church incorporates live satellite video teaching each week and launched an internet campus in April 2006.
Prior to merging with LifeChurch.tv, the Albany campus was home to Journey Church, a Pentecostal church.
Brower said the resources, training and direction provided by the LifeChurch.tv’s central office has allowed the congregation to focus on “loving God” and reaching out to the community.
The congregation in Albany, comprised of young families with kids, holds weekly small Bible study meetings called Life Groups, whose members also volunteer for micro-mission activities at food pantries and soup kitchens.
For the Thanksgiving and Christmas outreaches, the Albany campus has plans to partner with local organizations, such as Alpha Pregnancy Center, to distribute 2,000 Life Packs, big bags filled with practical and non-perishable items, to homeless children and single mothers in the community.
According to Bower, the church is contacting different organizations and hopes to distribute the Life Packs at the site of each organization.
