“Just recently we had an application from three persons who desired to enter the waters of baptism. Not desiring to wait until the weather was more pleasant so that we could retire to the river, I called upon a very influential man who I knew was a member of the Board of Control of the First Christian Church. … I called upon him and asked if it would be possible for us to arrange for the use of their baptismal font for this particular occasion, to which he answered very readily: ‘Yes, sir. I can make the arrangement for you, and will be very glad to do it,’ which he did. We had the privilege of going into the finest chapel in the city of Louisville, and those three persons entered the waters of baptism.”
– Miles L. Jones (president of the East Central States Mission), 1934
Very nice! Thanks for this. What a heartwarming anecdote.
This has got me thinking about the extent of the board member’s generosity. It’s one thing for a church to offer its property for general purposes (community service project, shelters, etc.). But I think it’s remarkable that a church would allow another church to use their sacred space (specifically, its baptismal font) for the other church’s own peculiar sacred purposes. I guess I can’t really imagine the sacrament table in an LDS chapel being used for a Catholic mass, for example.
Thanks for commenting on that, David. Sometimes, not always but sometimes, we’re so focused on how we’ve been mistreated in the past that I’ve been making a special effort to notice instances like this where ministers of other churches have gone out of their way to help us in our work in ways that would not seem to be of any benefit to them. People mention them a LOT in their letters — it’s become a matter of seeing what is actually there, rather than what I’ve been conditioned to expect to see.
I don’t know about your theoretical case. I know we’ve let others use our buildings when their own were destroyed for whatever reason — did we only provide the cultural hall and classrooms, or did we invite them to use the chapel, too? It might take some emotional adjustment sometimes, but I don’t know why we wouldn’t. I’ll watch for examples.
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-offers-chapel-for-worship-to-members-of-islamic-community – Here’s an example
Thanks, Jay. That’s a great example of real service, for little more effort than scheduling someone to open and then lock the building.
Well, it wasn’t and LDS sacrament table, but there was the 1996 Catholic Christmas Eve Mass in the Provo Tabernacle. My BYU organ professor (late 60s – early 70s) had also told of a much earlier Catholic mass in the Provo Tabernacle, complete with candles, etc.
This gets better and better! Thanks, JR.