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tagged: Baptism, Church Membership, Current Events, Ecclesiology, Geoff Baggett, International Mission Board, Missions, SBC Issues, You Make the CallYou Make the Call! – Episode 2
Posted by Geoff Baggett in IMPACT Features
You make the call … on baptism.
A young soldier, who hails from a Southern Baptist heritage and family (but has not, previously, made a faith decision of his own) makes a decision to follow Christ and is saved while deployed with the U.S. Army in Iraq. In following through on his decision with baptism, he asks to be immersed, in the same manner of the baptisms in his family’s church back home. His division chaplain happily agrees to do so, and he is immersed in baptism in one of the swimming pools on the grounds of a former mansion of Saddam Hussein.
At the end of his deployment he returns home and is welcomed into the membership of his parents’ Southern Baptist church through his statement of faith, based upon his decision and his obedience to follow Christ in baptism by immersion. He becomes a faithful servant in the church, teaching in the youth Sunday School, and going on several international mission trips. He marries a wonderful Christian woman who was raised in his family’s church, and begins a family.
Eight years later he and his wife sense a call of God to serve as a missionary on the international field.
Now … you make the call. Assuming that there are no other potential problems or difficulties (psychological, theological, medical, etc…), would this faithful Southern Baptist be
qualified to serve under appointment of the International Mission Board, and would he make it through the IMB’s qualification system under the current guidelines?
By the way … his division chaplain who enthusiastically immersed him upon his salvation was a chaplain endorsed by the Assemblies of God. He was assisted by a chaplain endorsed by the Presbyterian Churches (USA).
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It doesn’t matter what the IMB thinks. If God is calling him to serve overseas, God will find a way to get him there. If God is calling anyone to serve, that should be the only qualification that the IMB considers.
Afterall, what’s more important – God’s will or building up the SBC?
Making the call,
Lew
The Pursuit Online Store
Lew made the call just fine. When someone is gloriously saved and follows through in Baptism, it’s their heart that matters, not neccessairly the one pulling them up out of the water.
Good answers, but this fellow is seeking board appointment. What will the outcome be?
When one’s actions are pleasing to God, and are fulfilling one’s responsibilities as a believer, but are not pleasing nor fulfilling to the IMB, I wonder which one’s wrong.
God? Or the IMB?
It is not clear to me whether or not his baptism would be accepted under the current IMB guidelines. This is one of the problems with the new rules.
Geoff,
Assuming he was not re-immersed when he got stateside and joined a southern baptist church, I would say he would be unacceptable as an IMB appointee.
I, along with you and the other commenters, recognize that he and his family could/should obey the call of God on their lives and serve under another agency if necessary, but you were asking about the IMB position on his appoiuntment with them if I understand your question correctly.
This is the way I’m viewing the guidelines recently approved and if I’m misunderstanding them we stand in need, it would seem to me, of a major public education on what the real policies are.
“while Jesus was walking in the temple courts, the chief priest, the teachers of the law and the elders came to him. ‘By what authority are you doing these things?’ the asked. ‘And who gave you authority to do this?’
“Jesus replied, ‘I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. Johns’s baptism — was it from heaven, or from men? Tell me!’” Mark 11:27ff
The Jewish religious leaders wanted all religious acts to have the proper ecclesiastical authority, otherwise they should not be permitted. By his actions, Jesus testifies that if you have God’s authority, you shouldn’t concern yourself with authority of men or answer to their attempts of prohibition.
I appreciate R. Grannemann’s biblical take on the issue. The IMB’s BoT does seem far more interested in issues of authority and control than in the symbolic nature of the ordinance and its testimonial aspect of obedience to Christ. I also find it ironic that the Exec. Comm. cites allegiance to the principle of local church autonomy when declining to establish a database of known sex offenders, but the IMB BoT tramples on that principle at the point of refusing to recognize baptisms done in churches that don’t meet their standards.
I agree with the majority of what has been said here. I think Lew was correct, God’s way or man’s way? Not really a debate over that one.
However, if someone is called to serve in missions, then a board disqualifies that person, not over biblical issues or even accepted practices of the denomination, then isn’t the candidate being unjustly given a hardship to find another agency to send and fund the work and ministry to which God has called that person? If that person’s church has faithfully supported the missions offerings and missions work and still has to find alternative funding over some man-directed guideline, is that fair?
My guess is he will be asked to be re-baptized or be disqualified. Perhaps the IMB should add that to their commissioning ceremonies. Mass re-baptisms would remove all doubt.
David
As I understand the IMB’s guidelines there are two questions: 1) Was the administrator of the baptism SBC or like-minded? 2) Did the baptism take place in the context of a local church?
The answer to the first is “no”. But I’m not sure how the IMB would answer the second; surely there has been some thought given to military personnel in the field. It seems likely that no matter how the second question is answered, the IMB would still ask for the candidate to be rebaptized.
Of course if I made the call, the guidelines would be repealed. And, trustees would remove themselves from direct oversight of these questions. I always thought trustees should set the policies, hire the president, and get out of the way and let the staff do their job.
I know it may be a minor point pertaining to the discusion…but…my personal view of scripture is there is no such animal as re-baptism. It is either baptism or it isn’t.
As a student of scripture I have my definition settled and some christians may disagree with me. As a baptist I’ve settled it also. Some would disagree with that too. [By immersion as a testimony of my being identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, into which the Spirit has already identified me, and my personal and knowledgable experience of all that.] As I said, some may disagree with me there.
But to have to re-immerse someone because of the belief system of the one who did the baptizing when my church heard the person’s testimony and agreed that the original was, in fact, adequate by our baptist AND scriptural definition and understanding and then be told that we would need to re-immerse him because of a decision that an agency decided was best for them for him to be appointed, is a bit beyond the pale.
I’m not questioning the right for an entity to do so…just the wisdom and scriptural foundation for doing so.
During the Radical Reformation, the Anabaptists were accused by the original Reformers of being re-baptizers. This was viewed by all as a serious accusation. Their answer back then was that the people they were supposedly “re-baptizing” had never truly been baptized in the first place. So they, in actuality, were baptizing them the first time.
I believe it is important for us as Baptists today to be able to legitimately give the same answer to those who might ask the same question of us. If we say, though, as I have heard some say, “What difference does it make? What harm does it do to just go through the motions again, if it allows you to go to the mission field, and spread the gospel?,” we are, in effect, minimizing the significance of baptism. Biblical baptism is not a man-made ritual that we go through in order to jump through an administrative hoop that someone has set up. It is an act of obedience to the command of Christ. If we are not convicted by Christ’s command that we really have not been baptized, and that we need to baptized for real the first time, any substitute “re-baptism” cheapens and makes a mockery of true baptism.
That is one of the reasons why this issue is so important. Those who support the guideline often claim that they are the ones giving the proper emphasis to baptism. But, the truth is that they are trivializing biblical baptism, by turning it into something that neither Jesus nor the Bible ever said it was to be.
The way I understand the guideline, by the way, is that the legitimacy of the baptism hinges upon local church supervision and authorization. Thus, the person in the example given here would need to be “re-baptized.” But there is no biblical justification whatsoever for such a view.
Dave Miller’s series on this question thoroughly examines all the biblical evidence.
Start at the following link, and read all four posts:
http://thistentsjustright.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-is-biblical-baptism.html
Herein lies the problem: I think most Southern Baptist churches would gladly accept this guy as a member based on his profession of faith and baptism by immersion.
The IMB, however, might not accept his baptism as legitimate. You end up with an agency rejecting a baptism that one of its own churches accepted.
To clarify, the problem is not that the church would accept him–the problem is that the IMB would reject a baptism that a local SBC church has rightly accepted.
Here’s a situation that would be even trickier:
what if the chaplain affirmed the security of the believer, but was endorsed by a denomination that did not? (Yet they still endorsed the chaplain.)
Is the administrator the person dunking or the church endorsing?
This could end up being considered because of his heart. Since it is required that our missionaries be baptized in a Southern Baptist Church, or at least by a Southern Baptist even in Iraq, then he with a heart of glee should be willing to submit to the IMB, and go home and request to be baptized.
If he gets angry about it, then, he should not be a missionary.
Tim A. Blankenship
Tim,
Does Paul sound upset when he references those who place extra requirements on believers?
http://bible.cc/galatians/5-12.htm
One should not submit with glee to the IMB without asking what the Bible teaches.
amen and amen, with glee
I wouldn’t get angry if that was me. I’d be profoundly sad that a denomination that refers to itself as people of the book decided it needed revisions.
While we can affirm the prerogative of the church to investigate baptism and hold to what it believes are biblical requirements for church membership, the example above shows it is not the church, in the final analysis, that approves baptism. The one who approves it is God.
Good thoughts, all. I agree that, according to the policies, he would have to be re-immersed. Have we considered military personnel baptized by chaplains on the battlefield? I have not heard this scenario brought up before, and I doubt that we have considered it. Maybe there could be granted a special ecclesial dispensation for people in this situation. We can put that somewhere in Revelation 27 or 29.