Mentoring the New Believer - Lesson 5

Okay, we need to get going again; got an hour. The other thing that will come up in this discussion is the issue of baptism. And I don’t really know how important it is for us to discuss it. This is something that you all have made your own quality decisions in your church. And so I don’t know that there’s a whole lot I have to say to help on this. Wayne has chapter 49 on baptism. It’s a good thing to read. He talks about differences in mode. You dip, you pour, you sprinkle. It doesn’t matter. I’ve been in churches where if you didn’t dunk them, they said you weren’t baptized. And this is certainly one of the decisions you’ll have to make. 

It’s really weird. When we started the church, we were part of the Baptist General Conference, and I made an information packet just so people would come in…they were seeing this new church, and the number one question we were getting is, “Oh, you’re Baptists, you’re the people that believe if you’re baptized, you automatically go to Heaven.” And it was fascinating because, you know, it’s the exact opposite. In our information pack it was the first thing that you saw is ‘What’s a Baptist?’ And I hated putting it in there, but it was the number one question we got. People thought that because were Baptist, we believed in baptismal regeneration. And we’d say, “No, actually, the history of Baptists is that we fought against the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, that babies were not regenerated when being baptized, but rather baptism was only for people who could express their own faith.”

And baptism was not a means by which you are saved, but it’s your first act of obedience. Something to that effect. But it was fascinating what the people’s misunderstanding was. I remember one of my kids went to a private school in Spokane, and the school was in a church of a certain denomination. I can’t remember exactly which one it was, but they believed in not only baptismal regeneration, but they believe that if you weren’t baptized, you went to Hell. And so we were concerned about the kids going to a school in this church and with that teaching, get into the school, and we were assured that it wouldn’t. But in the process, we were in their worship center and at least they carried through on their beliefs. There was a communion table, and if there was an altar call, my kind of altar call (and I got to say they have every single time), that somebody would come down; they pushed the top off the communion table and the water was hot, and they dumped you in. They believed you had to be baptized to get to Heaven. And so as soon as someone expressed faith, they wanted to baptize as quickly as they could. Know our class in preparation, let me tell you. 

Student: How far in…? 

Dr. Mounce: No, all the way in; all the way in. And I thought, “Well, at least they’re carrying through.” They’re being consistent. But I remember asking the pastor, I said, “So if I came to this church and I was truly repentant, and truly have faith in Christ. And if I was walking down front to be baptized and fell dead, I would go to Hell?” And he said, “Absolutely.” So wide ranging of people’s images of baptism and what it means.

Whatever you end up doing, the person needs to understand what it is, that it’s an act of obedience; it’s nothing by which you earn your salvation. One of the really interesting questions that I think any church… What we find is, by the way, is we did what we call ‘position paper,’ wrote a ton of these things just to try to clarify what our belief was, and some of the position papers were on what’s salvation, and if you’re going to be a member in this church, you had to believe it. There were other position papers that were optional, just an elder position paper or a pastor position paper, just to kind of let people know what we believed in general. It became the document we used in our baptismal class. 

Somebody would express a desire to be baptized or, if the person became a Christian, the girl who had the bathroom ministry or the guy that normally walked with new Christians, they knew it was important to me, and they honored that to as quickly as they could, as soon as they were sure the conversion was true, to explain to them what baptism is, and to let the church celebrate the joy of a new believer. But we used the position paper as what baptism is and what baptism isn’t as kind of our teaching tool that we use. And we just walked people through it. The funny story behind is that we were doing a building expansion, and the architect who went to the church asked that the people who gave the money not be able to pick up the colors in the carpet and please just let us design the church. And I said, “Fine.” I said, “I’m going to have final say on some things, but this isn’t a joint project.”

And so we were in the architect’s office, and I was getting ready to sign the final paper saying build it, and we’re going to go $1.8 million in debt. And I’m sitting here looking at the plans and I was praying. I said, “Lord, if there’s something I’m missing here, let me know.” We changed the color of the carpet, but that was about it. And I was literally getting ready to sign the paper, and all of a sudden I said, “Yeah, my charismatic buddies from my Foursquare church would say, ‘The voice of the Lord just said to you.’” I say, “It’s just occurred to me that…” (I looked at the plans) I said, “We’re going to be the only Baptist church without a baptistry.” They had forgotten to put a baptistry in the church, and everything was all done. 

Alright, so we stopped; I didn’t sign it. And some of the people that were working with us said, “Oh, we’ll just use a neighboring church, or we’ll do it down the river.” And I said, “Under no circumstances.” I said, “There is nothing that breathes life into a church than watching new people come to Christ. We’re not going to take the baptisms and put them off on Sunday night, and some church that thought about having a baptistry and have 20 people show up.” We wanted to celebrate new life, and so we were about two months late in getting started, and we had to figure out how to pop out the back of the sanctuary to put a baptismal in there. But those are the kinds of decisions that you need to make beforehand. And then I think it’s just a matter of explaining to the people, “Okay, this doesn’t save you, it’s obedience.”

You’re going to have to tell people what happened. And again, let me really encourage you to do that. I was baptized when I was in fifth grade, and my dad was the interim pastor of the church. And I don’t think I was much of a ham, but I wasn’t shy either. I was kind of somewhere in the middle, and I can remember my dad making me stand up on Sunday night in front of the church and telling everyone how I had become a Christian and why I wanted to be baptized. I was scared spitless. I was terrified, just terrified. It is one of the most important things I ever did. Why? Public proclamation of your faith. 

Student: We’ve always had this rule that you would go through an orientation process…and then you don’t take communion if you haven’t been baptized; it’s just our practice…[inaudible]. And so on one particular Sunday I was serving communion to one of the prone, participating, tithing families…along with some others I was serving communion in this one row; and apparently she had a young son with her…he was probably in the 3rd or 4th grade, and she wanted him served. I said I wasn’t serving him communion because he hadn’t been baptized yet. She said “I baptized him this morning in the bathtub’. 

Dr. Mounce: Baptize your son in the bathtub…yeah, wow. 

Student: And so I looked at her and I said, “I can’t do it.” I love that man. But the decision was so insulting, intimidating…she was serious. 

Dr. Mounce: I would love to offer that woman a chance to baptize her son again and give the church the joy of watching new life. But baptism is a proclamation of faith. That means you got to proclaim it to someone. And, you know, if your mom’s the only person around—Phillip, well we don’t know if Phillip was the only person around; there probably was a driver and other people, right?

Student: We talked about that, but that’s hard. And I mentioned earlier today, I guess, that one baptism I did with the young man (who) couldn’t explain what a Christian was, which means that baptism meant nothing other than perhaps lulling him into a sense of complacency. And so these are all just things that are good to decide on. I really encourage you, and again, I don’t know in your traditions, what you do on this; do you allow people other than ordained ministers to baptize? 

Student: Church deacons can. 

Dr. Mounce: Church deacons can? What’s the reason behind that? 

Student: They can participate; they can be with them. 

Student: [inaudible] 

Dr. Mounce: What is the reason for not allowing, like a dad, to baptize his son? Well, why does it have to be clergy or a deacon? Is it a tradition thing, or is it a theological conviction thing, or tradition? I’m not hearing an answer. 

Student: [inaudible]. But if you’re ordained clergy, the father could participate, I would not be opposed to the father being in the, you know, just someone to assist me. You have to be ordained clergy to baptize a person… 

Dr. Mounce: Yeah, I could see if you weren’t a baptized believer, it wouldn’t make any point to be the one doing the baptism. I had never really thought about this until I visited a church once, and I watched the first church discipline I’d ever seen. And then I watched a father baptize his daughter. And it was kind of opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of experience. And I found out later the daughter had just given her parents just fits, and everyone knew it. And after years, she had come back to faith and had come back to a relationship with her parents. And so all the people that knew her in the church, I mean, this was an incredible time of celebration. And they actually put their baptistry really high. It was about 40 feet up on the back wall so everybody could see it, and the dad did it. And I’d never seen that before. And I really like it. I don’t know any biblical reasons that would convince me that only a clergy could do it. Be interested in some time to find out; a full discussion on that. For me I have very specific views on what a church is, and I don’t ever identify the church with an institution, or anything that’s visible. And so I don’t see baptism as admission to the church. And therefore, there’s no reason for me to have the leaders of the church doing it. It’s a huge issue. It’s just me. 

Student: [inaudible] 

Dr. Mounce: How many people here— Okay, let’s take a poll: how many people here would be comfortable if someone led…okay, I’ll give you an example. Thursday. What is today? Wednesday my wife is baptizing somebody. She’s never done this before. She’s just freaking out. But she helps lead a Bible study in the church. Robin has walked with this gal. She’s been an intimate part of her life. She actually gave the gal my book that I’m writing. And when he got to this chapter in the book, she got convicted she’d never been baptized.

So she asked Robin to baptize her on Thursday, but she didn’t want to be baptized in front of the church; she wants to be baptized in front of about the 100 women that come to Bible study, because those are the people that know her. In that scenario, how many of you would let my wife baptize this gal all by herself, no one else in the baptistry? Half. How many would let Robin participate if an elder deacon or the pastor were there with her and actually doing it? So almost all of you’re fine, at least at some level of having participation with a non-clergy. 

Student: I used to attend Antioch Bible Church in Hutcherson; [inaudible] was the pastor there. I worked at a high school with at-risk youth, and I had led one of the students there to Christ, and he started coming to church with me. He was from Mongolia, and so he’s learning all these things, but brand new. He had a Buddhist background, and he got really excited when he heard about baptism, and he wanted to do it. So I said, “Well, they have a class that you have to go to. You know, you need to really make sure you understand it.” And so I just kind of turned him over to the church. And when it was coming down, you know like, “Hey, we’re going to be doing it.” Hash came up to me and he said, you know, “I think you should do it.” The particular baptism they were using that one day, actually, nobody really got into the water with them; you were standing on the outside of it, and you baptize them there. But yeah, you know, I wasn’t going to argue with [inaudible], you know, but it was some kind of new to me as well.

So I baptized him. Nobody was there with me other than, you know, the pastors were around obviously. But yeah, it was really powerful. It was really meaningful to him and it was kind of a new issue for me to a certain extent. And it was, I didn’t see anything like biblical that would say, “Well, you’re not clergy at this church. Or you know, you need to be…” I didn’t see anything. 

Student: Is that just, with regard to baptism, or is that funerals… 

Dr. Mounce: I’m thinking primarily baptisms. Okay, we’re getting into church governance; has nothing to do with the class, but that doesn’t matter. 

Student: Oh, okay. I’m sorry. 

Dr. Mounce: No, that’s okay. You all keep wanting to talk about stuff. That’s a good thing. Gordon Fee, in one of his books, talks about this, that we’re the church, and the only one outside the church…now Gordon’s a raving Pentecostal. I don’t know if you know Gordon Fee, but outside of the church is Christ, and everyone else has gifts within the church. And some of those are gifts of healing. Some are gifts of teaching. Some are gifts of leadership/administration. But they all exist together. Now, the gift of position of eldering, or whatever you call it in your tradition, there naturally is a hierarchy of authority, but the point is you’re all together. It flattens the hierarchy. Other views, the church put all the different gifts here, and they put Christ here, and they put the pastor there, and then they almost put him outside the church in the sense that he has a level of authority that other gifts don’t have. And this is me. 

Now, understand, I’m not a Congregationalist. I’ve read the arguments for congregational rule and I’ve read them from John Piper and Mark Devers, and I think they’re completely and totally wrong, but that’s just me. So I believe in authority in the church. The teaching elder is the one with the authority, that’s you guys under the authority of Christ. But because I do this, this is where baptism comes in. I don’t see in my theology any reason to not allow the person who led the person to the Lord to baptize them. Funerals, I don’t know. I don’t think it matters to me at all. 

But preaching is the specific gift. And I don’t want people preaching that don’t have the gift. So what is this? This is how I look at structure. 

Student: In our church. It was bigger stuff. It was home group leaders and the church was big, and we had a lot of new converts. But it was just unpractical for a senior pastor to be baptizing everyone. And also people would see a pastor that was not the person they spent a lot of time with in the big church. It’s their home group leader that they always call to pray for them, that knows all their life, all their troubles. And the senior pastor for them is just the preacher on that screen, actually. 

Dr. Mounce: Yeah, yeah. I think small groups are really healthy. The church doubled in size every decade up until it became the official church of the Roman Empire. And it did it all without a single church building until…church buildings, large assemblies, were not part of the church the first several hundred years. I’ve stood in the ruins of ancient homes. You can’t get much more than 20 people in them. And so everything was house churches. And so, you know, you can talk about the church of Philippi. Well, the church of Philippi met in a lot of different houses, and would have had a teaching elder over everyone. We call them small groups today. Especially if your church is committed to small groups, there’s all kinds of stuff like baptisms, that you got that kind of look at again and wonder, because the last thing you want to do is baptize someone you don’t know. Yes sir. 

Student: It would be very hard. My church is a very, fairly very large church. If I let the deacons baptize, they would have a meeting. And I baptize sometimes 15-16 people at one particular time. There’s a special significance to your pastor getting you baptized…(inaudible)…I don’t care if you got 35 deacons, 1000 elders…it’s just an African-American thing. 

Dr. Mounce: I don’t think it’s an African-American thing. I think it’s…but it’s just, there are different traditions. And it is hard, though, isn’t it, guys? You sit there and you preach and you’re a vital part of hundreds of people’s lives, even when you don’t know them, and you want them when they’re hurting, to go to the small groups because those are the people that know them. But you also want them to know you and trust you enough to listen, and do all this stuff. I remember John Piper saying, he said he lost track of how many weddings and funerals he did at first, because he was their pastor and the church was growing, but he was the pastor and they wanted him involved in weddings and funerals.

I don’t know if there’s an answer to that, but as far as new believers are concerned, obviously the thing that’s important, I think, is that they understand it’s not baptism or regeneration. It doesn’t save them. It’s an act of obedience. You’re proclaiming publicly the inner change that’s happened. They need to be able to express that either like I did where I had to say it or, you know, maybe they’re so terrified of being up in front of people that you can go through and have the pastor go through a confession of faith and have them say yes. If you’re going to baptize 15 people, you’re not going to have them telling, each one telling a testimony, I would guess. Or do you have them tell testimonies? 

Student: No, but before they’re baptized, they go through a membership orientation. 

Dr. Mounce: So they do it in the context of the class. 

Student: When they enter into the congregation, when they come forward during the invitation of the altar call, they come up after the sermon; they walk up, and there are counselors who are standing there…make sure they don’t need prayer [unintelligible] …whatever their needs are; because sometimes maybe 17 people will come, 6 of them come up for prayer; the others want to join the church. They go to the class Salvation. They may not come back [unintelligible] to the next Sunday; then they are assigned a class; if they are adults, they go to one person; if they’re teenagers, they go to another; if they’re children, they go to another. They go through the 6 week orientation. They have one meeting with me; I meet on Fridays from 3 to 5, and I meet with those families [unintelligible] and I approve them for baptism… [unintelligible].

Dr. Mounce: I think I like to go to your church. I like it when a church has thought out. I don’t agree or disagree with that. I like it when the church has thought out. I applaud you for that. 

Student: [inaudible] We baptize on the 4th Sunday, and that’s what we do as a part of our worship, starts at 10:15 to 11:15, I baptize them; then after the baptizing we go to the second service and that’s where we do our preaching.

Dr. Mounce: So do you have an earlier service then? 

Student: Uh huh. 

Dr. Mounce: Okay. So you’re doing it between services. 

Student: [inaudible] 

Student: How do you view Acts chapter 2…how do you do that? 

Dr. Mounce: Are those the 3,000? 

Student: Yeah. But how do you view it, when they were baptized in the Apostles…compared to Jesus, where he gave them the Great Commission?

Dr. Mounce: How do I view it in terms of how would it have happened? 

Student: No, as far as baptism… 

Dr. Mounce: It must have been an interesting time in 3,000 people, and instruction going on. And I’m sitting here thinking, I wonder how they were baptized. They must have been sprinkled. There’s no baptistries on the Temple Mount. 

Student: But they had to do it. 

Dr. Mounce: Are they in the river when they’re being baptized…I don’t know. But in terms of setting… 

Student: There are 2 ordinances in a Baptist church… 

Dr. Mounce: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Two direct commands from God. But I wouldn’t feel that I had to do it the same way it happened the first time. I don’t think I would feel any theological compulsion to say however those 3,000 were baptized, that’s how I’m going to do it. Now, if I had 3,000 converts at one time, I might find that I needed to. But part of the argument, I would say, is they got baptized, didn’t they? Right away. What I struggle with theologically (and this is just me and I could be wrong), and I mean that, the true church is invisible, and I resist institutionalizing the true church. And so baptism is a sign of admission into the true invisible church. And when it’s made a sign of admission into the visible church, I struggle a bit with that. 

When I was in high school, I went to a Free Methodist church because they had the best softball team in town, and we loved to go to State. When I was in college, I went to a different church, and it was a church that was on the “the other side of the tracks,” and they just desperately needed people to come down and help. And it’s the first place I ever preached. I can still remember standing there. I had a gold striped shirt on with a sleeveless gold sweater on. It was baggy, and I was sweating like I never, I could just feel ripples of sweat pouring down my back. I was scared spitless. I’m going, “What am I doing up in front of these people?” And it was a church that I loved and I served. And my grandma, who at that time’s gotta been 85 years old, used to come down with me, and we looked like the odd couple, let me tell you.

And we came to the first time for communion and grandma, for the first time in her life, was refused communion because she hadn’t been baptized in that particular building. I was sitting here thinking, why do I believe this? I said, “I’m wondering how much of it is a reaction against that experience.” It bothered me that they thought of the church as being that building, and it’s not. The building is a building. The church is people. And so just by default, that’s why I’m this… But anyway, that's just me. Grandma served there for a while, and then she said, “I can’t do this any longer. I can’t keep serving in a church that denies me the Lord’s Supper because I was baptized 60 years ago in North Dakota.” Well, here’s one of the interesting questions, and we’re going to leave it at this. 

In the church I helped start in Spokane, we merged with another church, and it was a Baptist church. And the church that we had started was kind of an independent CMA kind of church. When we were looking at merging, we were looking at our theological positions and were there any problems? And there was one insurmountable problem. It was baptism. And if you’re going to be in the Baptist General Conference, you have to be baptized by immersion if you are going to join the church. That’s a hard and fast rule in the Baptist General Conference, and no ways around it, at least 15 years ago. We had people in our church that had become true Christians when they were attending a Presbyterian church and they were sprinkled. And so they could not be members of the new church. What would you do? Well, I will let them come by the church and teach them gratitude.

Now, learned its properties, would you re-baptize him? The problem was…

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Mounce: Okay. I mean, we’re about as far away from the curriculum as we can get. But I find this…this is one of those fascinating real life questions that we never discussed in theology class. The problem with re-baptizing Colleen is that she was raised Lutheran and her parents would have been aghast, and she didn’t want to hurt her parents because she’d been baptized as a baby. Right. And I’d say, “Well, you understand, Colleen, that in my theology, that’s not baptism.” She goes, “I don’t believe it was either. That’s why I was baptized when I became a Christian, and they sprinkled me.” So she had been baptized as a believer; baptized as a baby; and still couldn’t join the church. It was just interesting; so all to say, just make sure that the new believers understand what is going— But I would encourage…get them out there and get them to share. Don’t do it at a time of the year…between services when people are around, those things are really good. Let people know the joy of what’s going on. Let them know. 

Student: [inaudible] …says on 984… recognizes there’s no Scripture, simply does not specify any restrictions on who can perform… And then he says, “If we are truly in the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:4-10), it seems that there’s no need in principle to restrict the right to perform…” 

Dr. Mounce: Yeah, that is the theological argument for that view of the church is the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2 and other passages). And so if we’re all priests, we don’t need a priest. We have one high priest. That’s the only one there is. What it does, it flattens the hierarchy of the church. But anyway, that’s it. 

Okay. Hey, here’s what I want to do. We are going to accelerate tomorrow. I promise, I promise. These were the two hard chapters. These are the ones that, as you actually use the curriculum, it’s highly doubtful that you will do this in two weeks. These questions are going to come, but the rest of the curriculum is really, what are the Fruits of the Spirit look like, and what are the kinds of things that we need to look at. Thanks for the day. Again, we wandered a lot, but it was fun. I enjoy that, and I will see you tomorrow, and we’ll talk about stumbling and sin and confession. 

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