When Morgan McQueen rose up from the waters of the baptismal pool on Easter Sunday at Faith Baptist Church in Old Town, she was a changed person.
“I can’t explain it,” she said. “I just truly feel different. I’m acting different. I’m ministering to people. Talking to people about God like I never did before. I just feel moved. I feel changed.”
McQueen, 37, a pediatric nurse, said she felt the call to accept Christ as her savior during a church service about two weeks before Easter.
During his sermon that day at Faith Baptist Church, Pastor Dwayne Kight told the story of the good shepherd who would leave his 99 sheep to go find the one lost sheep, referencing this parable from the book of Matthew that indicates God’s love for each of us as individuals.
“I was the one,” she said, referring to herself as the lost sheep and recalling how she began crying during the service. “The whole sermon was so moving. It was like he was speaking directly to me from God.”
The pastor, who uses social media as a ministry tool, asked his congregation to post about this good shepherd. While he asked everyone to post “He left 99 for 1,” she posted “He left 99 for me. Because I was lost.”
McQueen has attended the church off and on since she was a child, and had even previously been baptized there as a teen. But she felt she had just gone through the motions at the time and never really followed through with it. Once she became an adult she did not attend church regularly.
“I had fallen away from God and everything to do with God,” she said. “It’s not that I didn’t believe, but I hadn’t been practicing like I needed to. I had not been living my life the way I need to be living.”
These days, she and her two children, Cale, 12 and Aubree, 6, all attend church together at Faith Baptist.
Her baptism on Easter Sunday is an experience she says she will never forget. It has made a lasting impact on her life.
“I feel so changed even in the things I do from day to day, the way I speak to my kids, the compassion and empathy,” she said. “I feel different. At work it means more for me when I’m telling people about God. Even if it’s something as simple as saying ‘I’ll say a prayer for you,’ or ‘I’ll say a prayer for your son.’ I feel closer and I feel like I can reach out to people and help other people find God too.”