Austin Gohn, lead pastor with Bellevue Christian Church in Pittsburgh, shares today’s Christmas memory. (And be sure to check back the next two days.)
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By Austin Gohn
It’s the late 1990s, and I’m sitting in the audience of the annual Christmas production at my suburban megachurch when something happens that’s obviously not in the script (or the Scriptures, for that matter).
Now, this is no ordinary, low-budget Christmas pageant with bathrobes doubling as first-century villager attire. We’re one of the biggest churches in the area, and we know how to put on a Christmas show.
We have a huge sanctuary with padded pews (and a balcony for additional seating). There’s a state-of-the-art baptistery that feels less like the Jordan River and more like your neighbor’s jacuzzi. The stage has an orchestra pit and room for a choir that would rival the angelic host. We have a parking lot that feels as big as our local superstore.
And we’re about to leverage all of that to create the best Christmas production our neighborhood has ever seen. All for the sake of the gospel, of course. Perhaps, if we can bring the Christmas story to life on stage as never before, someone might be moved enough to respond to the gospel and get baptized in our temperature-controlled baptistery.
We spend months preparing for this show, and it feels like the whole church gets involved in some way or another. There’s a cast of adults and kids, a full choir, somewhat realistic costumes, spotlights, sound effects, musicians, and live animals—a sheep, at the very least, and possibly a few other creatures that might have frequented a Bethlehem stable 2,000 years ago.
IT’S SHOW TIME!
We’ve invited our unbelieving neighbors and friends, and we’ve prayed they would experience the gospel. My family is there, sitting in one of the padded pews, with a good angle to view all the on-stage action.
But, at some point during the show, we hear the distinct sound of a splash, stage left, coming from the state-of-the-art baptistery. It appears that someone was so moved by the performance that they went for it and got baptized.
By the time the audience looks in the direction of the splash, there is, in fact, someone in the baptistery, but she’s wearing full Bethlehem attire and she’s not alone. She’s chasing a stray sheep that is joyfully swimming through the warm water.
It seems the “shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night” (Luke 2:8) weren’t doing their jobs. Now, there’s a sopping wet sheep that, I have a feeling, will not be dry in time for its next cue, and an audience trying, but failing, to contain its laughter—despite the effort to keep the show moving. For the sake of the drenched animal handler, it’s just too bad we didn’t have any bathrobes on hand.
I have no idea what scene was happening on the stage at the time, and I doubt anyone in the audience remembers either. The swimming sheep stole the show, and it’s all we were talking about afterward on the way back to the parking lot.
Despite all the rehearsals and realistic details, I’ll never know if anyone in the audience that night responded to Jesus. But I do know that, at the very least, all theological considerations aside, there’s a sheep that was moved enough to not just bow down before the manger but spontaneously baptize itself at our suburban megachurch.
Austin Gohn serves as lead pastor at Bellevue Christian Church in Pittsburgh. He is the author of A Restless Age: How Saint Augustine Helps You Make Sense of Your Twenties.
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