Too Hot to Handle: Baptized Into What?

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

I’m going to quote a full minute or two of a recent sermon on the subject of the New Testament teaching about baptism here because I want to fairly represent what this particular pastor was trying to communicate. A punchy line or two out of a message is fun, but may distort the speaker’s intent. In this case, providing the entire context makes that intent quite clear.

“I believe that the commission to baptize all nations was given to the church.

I have different conversations about this: “We were at an event and a baptism took place”, or “We were at a camp and a baptism took place” or, hey, “A bunch of us friends wanted to get together and we had a baptism”. I talked with a guy that said his small group did a baptism.

Where do we get the right to say that we are a local church if we are a small group or an organization? Let me tell you what I think the problem with that is. Let’s say if it happens at a camp or at a retreat — well, a retreat might be a little different because it’s more associated with a church — let’s say a camp. So a person is saved and baptized.

What happens then? Then camp is their church, and they are somewhat disconnected from a local body, a local church … until when? Until next summer, until camp starts all over again. That’s problematic. See, I think what needs to happen in a situation where a young person is saved at a Christian camp … I think what needs to happen is that person is saved, then the church is contacted: ‘This young person has made a profession of faith in Christ, we’ve walked them through what it means to be baptized. Let’s get them back in your church and let’s get them baptized in the church.’ ”

Tom: I see Immanuel Can is chomping at the bit already. IC, what’s your take?

Breaking Down the Issues

Immanuel Can: For me, there are three issues this speaker raises. One is his take on the practical consequences of allowing people to baptize outside of the church and clergy (namely, he thinks this denigrates their relationship with the local church). The second is the scriptural warrant for keeping baptism in the local church (a thing he seems to assume rather than bother to prove). Then there’s a third thing, one more implicit here but that he makes explicit in his additional comments; and that is the connection he sees between baptizing a person and bringing him/her into church membership (that is, that he seems to see it as a sort of church initiation ritual).

So which do you want to take first, Tom?

Baptism in the Local Church and Scripture

Tom: Oh, let’s do the scripture first. He’s against allowing people or maybe just against encouraging people to baptize outside a local church where there can be follow-up and membership.

But where do we get this idea that baptism falls under the purview of a local church? That’s not remotely a New Testament idea, is it? I mean, the Great Commission, including baptism, was given to individual believers. The church did not yet exist. Now the church did exist in the book of Acts, both locally and universally, but Philip baptized the eunuch from Ethiopia beside the highway. What church was the eunuch baptized into? Or the new believers in the house of Cornelius in Acts 10; what local church were they baptized into?

This preacher asks, “Where do we get the right to say that we are a local church?” Wrong question. We should be asking who gives anyone the right to restrict or control how professing believers get baptized?

Time and Circumstances

IC: That’s true. That’s the real issue here: when, where and under what circumstances is baptism to happen? Our problem starts with timing: in every case we have from scripture, baptism was immediate, on the spot, for every believer. There is no thought in scripture of an unbaptized believer. But we routinely allow people to make professions of faith without understanding that what they are doing is the dying to self that is modeled in baptism. That’s wrong.

Tom: I think this reflects the tendency of churches to want to micromanage these things and the default expectation among believers that it is right for them to do so. I mean, Catholicism vests authority in the Church rather than simply the scripture. Protestantism broke away from that to a degree and Evangelicism even more so. Still, we have not completely lost this sense that we must look to the church for approval or initiative about many things that are simply the responsibility of individual Christians. The eunuch asks “What prevents me?” It’s a really good question. Peter declared, “Can anyone withhold water?” I would suggest we had better not withhold water.

Location, Location, Location

IC: Here’s another thing: the issue of place. In no case was baptism ever cloistered in a church or temple; rather, it was invariably in a public waterway of some kind, as in the case of the Ethiopian eunuch. In fact, so nondescript was the waterway, we don’t even have its name. It certainly wasn’t even the muddy Jordan, where Christ and John’s disciples were baptized. But I think the most important feature was this: it was public, not privatized in any way. If so, we are wrong to hide in a church building to do baptism, because it deprives the person being baptized of the publicity that ought to attend his/her decision, and deprives the world of that testimony. I wonder if we’d have so many lackadaisical professors of faith if we went back to public baptism.

Tom: That’s quite right. Basically the NT criteria seems to be “Where’s the nearest body of water?” Nobody in the New Testament seems to think they need approval, or a venue, or a special date, or a special ceremony. It’s like, you’re saved? Let’s get it done. So, fine, you get saved at camp, get in the lake. Why not?

Who’s In Charge?

IC: I also think he’s way off track when he supposes a clergyman or religious official should even be present. There is no biblical mention of anything like clergy in connection with baptism: often it was performed by someone on hand, maybe the person who had brought the person to repentance or salvation; sometimes not even by that person, but by someone else on hand, another Christian. Paul sometimes actively avoided baptizing people, in order to keep clear of any misapprehension of his personal specialness.

Tom: Absolutely. Again, I think this comes back to the default assumption that the church must sanction these sorts of things to make them “official”.

IC: But what about this idea that baptism is some sort of membership ritual for the local church? Does he have a legitimate worry that people will stop valuing the local church if we baptize them at camp or in some other informal circumstance?

Tom: Is that the worry? I was thinking he had absorbed the high church notion that baptism grants you membership to a particular church.

IC: It’s not a worry in my view. But he worries about it. He worries there are all these people who will think they don’t need the church or him in order to be baptized, and he’s trying to hedge off that possibility. He also thinks believers would get baptized then continue in their way NOT being members of the church.

Tom: Wait, wait ... is he ... salaried? Never mind. Ungracious thought there. Carry on.

The Practical Consequences of Baptizing Outside the Church

Earlier you mentioned that he seems to have a concern that baptizing outside the local church (and perhaps with the presence of “clergy”) denigrates the new believer’s relationship with the local church. Can you expand on that.

IC: Well, he thinks that if someone is not “church baptized” then he or she will be less likely to see any need to be in a local church. The cause-and-effect he posits there doesn’t look at all obvious to me, but he seems to think it should.

Tom: Even if being baptized in a particular local church does make you a “member” of that local entity — something quite foreign to the teaching of scripture — he is still presupposing a sort of continuous church fellowship that almost nobody these days experiences. I was baptized in one meeting, broke bread in another a year later, and have attended five or six others regularly since, depending on my location and stage of life. Even many of the New Testament saints moved around and could not be said to be “members” of only one particular gathering of believers.

What Draws Believers into Church Fellowship?

I think he’s worrying about something that is not really an issue if a person has genuinely become a follower of Christ. Say you get saved at a Christian camp; really, truly saved. There first thing the Spirit of Christ in you is going to want is fellowship. How do we know we have passed from death into life? Because we love the brethren. If that isn’t true, we are probably not believers at all.

IC: I agree. And I think that substituting the regulations of man for the principles of scripture is always a bad idea. It’s always done with the rationale that it’s more “practical” to do so, but I think that only shows a lack of trust in the purposes and plans of the Head of the church. After all, if the Good Shepherd cannot keep his own sheep, we are certainly not going to be able to round them up with our regulations.

Baptism as Initiation Ritual

Tom: How about your third observation, the one about using baptism as a church initiation ritual. With whom are we identified in baptism, IC? Is it with a local congregation?

IC: Not at all. It is true that we are all “baptized into one body”, but the emphasis there is very explicitly on the universal body of Christ, into whose death we are baptized. There is no mention of a person being baptized into a local church at all, and no mention of membership or commitment to the local church associated with baptism … not anywhere, and not ever. So this preacher’s concern is simply one the Bible does not share.

Tom: And it is advisable to share concerns with the Bible. Our pastor friend is right in that he identifies baptism as connecting us to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Good on him. But how he gets from that to initiation or identification with a particular local church is quite mystifying.

IC: Perhaps that accounts for the fact that he really doesn’t know what baptism is. It’s a public confession of the death of an individual and his or her rebirth with Christ. As such, it precedes but does not cause local church membership, and no one has the right to interfere with an individual’s right to do it wherever he or she is. The preacher in question worries that it will denigrate the role of the church if a person does it in a public way, say with friends or at a camp. But he’s simply wrong.

The more public the situation, the more courageous the declaration.

That seems to me to be the best and truest spirit of baptism.

Tom: Amen.