When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020, Christians around the world lamented the loss of in-person gatherings. Rosemary Lightner saw it as an opportunity to attend a full church service for the first time.

Lightner has been bed-ridden since 2013 due to an injury. She lives in San Diego, California, with her daughter, who is her caregiver. Lightner found herself alone more often, and God began to pursue her.

She felt God telling her to use her coding skills, so she went on to freelance marketplace website to find a job. Lightner found one posting from a man in West Chester, Pennsylvania, named Jacob that stood out.

“I almost didn’t talk to him because it said, ‘No cursing,’” Lightner said. “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s going to be Christian.’”

She decided to talk to him despite her reservations, starting a friendship that helped lead her to Christ. Jacob discipled her as she grew into a strong Christian and what she calls a “vessel of prayer.”

Rosemary accepted Christ in 2014, and her early years of Christianity were spent listening to God and reading as much as possible. Due to her injury, she could not attend church in person.

“I used to watch sermons online, but before COVID, all you got was the sermons,” Lightner said. “When they’d start the sermons, [the pastor] would say ‘Wow that was some really moving music that we just had,’ and it plays into the sermon, but I didn’t get to hear the music.”

It was only when the pandemic started that Jacob’s church, West Chester Church of the Nazarene, moved its services online. Jacob encouraged her to watch.

“When COVID happened, churches started doing the full services online, and people are like ‘Oh, sorry we only get to meet online,’ but I’m ecstatic,” Lightner said. “[Putting full services online] is the most wonderful thing that has happened for me. I can go to the whole church service, actually hear the music, and take communion. My first time taking communion was with West Chester.”

As she began to connect with the West Chester congregation, she asked Lead Pastor Owen White if he could help her get baptized. She had brought up the subject in the past to multiple pastors from other denominations in the San Diego area who either ignored her or simply stopped contact after initial conversations. 

White was unsure how to fulfill her request, so he posted on a Facebook group for pastors. 

“I put this scenario out there,” White said. “I asked, ‘If you have a virtual worship member and you’re a pastor in Pennsylvania and this member is worshipping virtually with you from San Diego, California, and she wants to be baptized, what would you do?”

Some recommended White hop on a plane to baptize her in person, but the thought of getting on a plane and going across the country didn’t seem safe amid the pandemic. That’s when Jon Twitchell, a Nazarene minister who lived about 45 minutes north of Rosemary, offered to help conduct an in-person baptism and stream it through Zoom into West Chester’s service. 

On 25 February 2021, Rosemary was baptized after a seven-year wait.

“This was a tangible water baptism,” Twitchell said. “This was a laying on of hands and praying and pouring water. And yet at the same time, it existed in this video virtual world where her family could join in from different places. Her church family could participate. Her daughter was there, present in the park. My wife came down with me for the day, and it was just an opportunity to really be the Body of Christ in a very tangible way in a world that's been difficult to be tangible over the last year.”

Rosemary continues attending West Chester’s online services, tithes to the church, and is even in the process of becoming a member. 

“I’m connected with that church,” Lightner said. “I’m connected with those people. They accept me as someone who will pray for them. Sometimes we’re in a meeting online and some of the members of the church will privately message me and ask for prayer. That’s the most beautiful thing because I’ve cried out to God for purpose. I’m a shut-in, and what other purpose could God give me than prayer? He gave me purpose.”