the power of baptism

Our training in South Asia involves meeting with indigenous church planters regularly to mentor/teach. Every time we meet, we use a process outlined as follows:
1. Accountability/Encouragement 2. New Teaching 3. Practice and 4. Assignment. This is basically how we “teach to obey”. There is much more about this that we will discuss in future posts. This post continues the discussion on baptism.

On one occasion, we were receiving reports about church planting efforts during a two-month period. They had followed the pattern we taught: praying as you go, sharing your personal story, finding the person of peace, gathering the household to share gospel stories, and staying with the new disciples to teach them to obey (among other things). We were greatly encouraged to hear that this particular small group of church planters now had 150 new believers!

We praised the Lord together and shared words of encouragement. Then we asked, “How many of these are baptized?” The main leader answered, “They are all ‘ready’ for baptism.” I then asked, “Why are they not baptized?” The main leader replied, “I have not had time” (he had traveled and was involved in some other activities). Of course, a red flag went up for me. I asked, “Who does the baptizing?” Only the main leader raised his hand.

We had already covered practical “how to” instruction on baptism, as well as the why, where, when, etc. So, I knew that was not the issue. We went back over those things again, just to make sure. But that was not the problem. The issue was one of authority. Only the main leader appeared to have the authority to baptize. After consulting with other national partners and with the main leader, we decided that the rest of the church planters needed assurance that they too have the authority to baptize. So, the next day we organized a special service and had the main leader lay hands on them, pray for them and “authorize” them to do all the Great Commission commands. We explained that this was not legal ordination to avoid problems with traditional denominational churches and the government. This was confirmation of their leadership to do all that was necessary to plant New Testament churches. I gave them the assignment, to go back and baptize every new believer in Christ that has confessed Jesus as their only God. In our context, this confession also involves cleaning house of all idols and images, along with other evidence of repentance. Also, in our context, ritual bathing is practiced by the main religion, so we must be careful that new believers fully understand the meaning of baptism and that it has no power to save or cleanse.

The next month we expected to hear that they baptized around 150 new believers. To our amazement, they returned the next month to report over 450 baptisms and over 50 new house churches! Of course, we were cautious about the reports and we wanted to confirm everything. After confirmation of names, dates, places, details, etc., we set out to determine what happened to bring in such a harvest. Here is what we discovered: The church planters felt empowered; they did not wait on permission from a higher authority. They baptized a new second generation of disciples and then empowered them to go and make disciples (with training of course). The second generation reproduced a third generation of disciples and they were baptized! Now, they were not baptized by the second generation. It all happened so fast that the second generation leaders did not feel confident (or authorized) to baptize. So, the first generation baptized the third. Now they are doing intensive training of the second and third generation leaders so that all will be fully equipped and empowered to obey the Great Commission.

If you sat under my teaching, you would know that this happened in spite of my abilities, intelligence, etc. I have made so many errors, a comedy of errors, but it’s not funny. I have failed the Lord over and over, the only way to explain this little success is: God. He is sovereign, He is at work in people’s lives, and He will use the most unlikely people to accomplish His will for His glory. So, we want to give all the glory to God and I will take responsibility for the failures.

I wanted to share what God is doing in our midst to illustrate a point about the power of baptism. While it is true that baptism is symbolic and no special power is derived from it, there is something about this step of obedience that emboldens believers. Where we serve, most new believers suffer consequences for publicly identifying with Christ through baptism. Their families reject them, or even disinherit them. They can lose jobs or businesses. But despite this, one can note the difference in their faith and life after following the Lord in baptism. Both, the baptizer and the one baptized, participate in a worship experience that somehow changes things. God honors their obedience and blesses them for it.

“As you are going, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them …” (Mt. 28:19a). I have to confess, in the past as a missionary I failed to emphasize the importance of baptism in making disciples. We would postpone, go easy on new believers, require they go through a discipleship course before baptism, etc. We set a pattern that diminished the importance of that part of the Great Commission. Many times new believers wandered off and out the back door of the church because of our neglect. I believe now that it had an adverse affect on our ministry and was probably one of the major factors in not seeing greater harvest. For church planting, we see a pattern in the book of Acts for immediate baptism. I think that pattern is there for a purpose. Still, we do not baptize immediately, but now we do encourage baptism as one of the first steps of obedience for a new believer. If they are not willing to take that step, we take that as a “no” to following Christ. We don’t expect new believers to be fruitful disciples until they follow the Lord in baptism.