mr. t.......... on mission

encouraging one another to be on God's mission

Friday, July 07, 2006

baptism blues

“I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name. Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas. Besides, I do not know whether I baptized any other. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.” (I Cor. 1:14-17).

We served in Latin America for many years before moving to South Asia a couple of years ago. Why we did that is a whole ‘nother story. One of the big issues among Christians there (and just about everywhere) is who can baptize, who can be baptized, and when? (Does this sound familiar)? Most established churches have their tradition or custom and that has become “bible” for them. The last place we lived in Latin America we helped with a new house church. One of the first converts was a medical doctor. Unfortunately, we had a long-time believer from an established church that kind of pushed his way into the situation. He insisted that we should have an ordained pastor baptize this new brother in Christ. It did not matter that this pastor, who was not even involved in the house church, was not discipling this new believer. I wanted one of the lay leaders in the church to baptize the good doctor. He was a leader in the new church and one of the people discipling the new brother. I thought we had everything worked out until we arrived at the pool for baptism. There was that ordained pastor and at the last minute, he was pushed to go into the pool and stand on one side of the doctor while our lay leader stood on the other side. They both baptized him taking one arm on each side, and boy did he get dunked, but good! To make a long story short, that house church did not reproduce. A precedent was set that day with the first five baptized believers – “we must have a certain type of authorized person to baptize”. That started a “domino effect” with other issues that came up … the Lord’s Supper, “qualified” leadership, church structure, etc. It is possible that a church planting movement was killed that day by the poolside, we will never know. The Lord always finds someone else to obey His will if we are unwilling. He used someone else out of that church to start another house church that has reproduced many times over. Meanwhile, the original “house church” became a congregation with an inward focus.

Jesus commands us to make disciples and baptism accompanies obedience to that command (Mt. 28:19). Jesus modeled this in his ministry (Jn. 4:1,2). We see the pattern for immediate baptism of new followers of Christ throughout the book of Acts. It is interesting that Jesus did none of the baptizing (see Jn. 4:2). The great missionary Paul did very little baptizing (see I Cor. passage at the beginning of this post). In fact, Paul said that it was not a big deal who did the baptizing (my paraphrase of that passage). This issue (among others) had caused division in the Corinthian church. Paul rebuked them and said basically – you are missing the point! “Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel!” Baptism is still important; it accompanies the making of disciples. But extra-biblical rules for baptism should not be a barrier to obeying the Great Commission. Sadly, it is one of the barriers to the expansion of God’s kingdom on just about every mission field today.

We will continue this line of discussion in the next post. What are your thoughts? What issues concerning baptism have you faced while on mission?

6 Comments:

Blogger J. Guy Muse said...

We could sit down and talk for hours on this subject! Who can baptize, and who may be baptized are huge issues with us as well. I would be interested to know where you served in Latin America, but what you write is pretty much the way it is everywhere. We are considered "heretics" by many because of the stand we have taken about this issue. I tell people I would rather "err" on the side of being obedient to what Christ commanded than to err on the side of current tradition and evangelical practices.

Saturday, July 08, 2006 12:14:00 PM  
Blogger Tim Patterson said...

Guy, if you don't mind my asking ... who can baptize among the churches you work with? Do they meet any certain requirement to qualify as a "baptizer"?

Saturday, July 08, 2006 8:27:00 PM  
Blogger J. Guy Muse said...

who can baptize among the churches you work with?

Any other baptized believer who is a follower of Christ. Usually this will be the servant-leader of the house church that has won them to the Lord, or someone they invite to do the baptizing. None of our servant-leaders are ordained. Our emphasis is not so much on WHO can baptize, as it is that they BE baptized.

Saturday, July 08, 2006 9:29:00 PM  
Blogger Tim Patterson said...

Guy,

Must be nice. I'm happy for you all, that you are able to work without interference from traditional churches. We still have to deal with established church leaders trying to influence our new churches on what they can and cannot do. I thought I would get away from that when we left Latin America for this part of the world. As the saying goes: "The grass always looks greener on the other side." My addition to that saying is: "But you get there and find the same old cows." ;-)

Sunday, July 09, 2006 9:29:00 PM  
Blogger Kevin Stilley said...

Hello T, You state "But extra-biblical rules for baptism should not be a barrier to obeying the Great Commission. Sadly, it is one of the barriers to the expansion of God’s kingdom on just about every mission field today." I would be interested in hearing more about this. Thanks, Kevin.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006 12:58:00 AM  
Blogger Tim Patterson said...

Hey Kevin,

Next post I will go into more detail about that.

Thanks.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006 8:20:00 AM  

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