Baptists preserve entry into their churches only through conversion. The concept of a regenerate church membership is the key concept in distinguishing Baptists from many other Christian groups.
Conversion into the fellowship of a church occurs when someone gives testimony to conversion, usually through demonstration of this through acceptance of believer’s baptism. (The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith Chapter XXIX : Of Baptism)
“1. Baptism is an Ordinance of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, to be unto the party Baptized, a sign of his fellowship with him, in his death, and resurrection; of his being engrafted into him; of remission of sins; and of his giving up unto God through Jesus Christ to live and walk in newness of Life.
2. Those who do actually professe repentance towards God, faith in, and obedience, to our Lord Jesus, are the only proper subjects of this ordinance. Mark 16:16. Acts 8:36-37.
3. The outward element to be used in this ordinance is water, wherein the party is to be baptized, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
4. Immersion, or dipping of the person in water, is necessary to the due administration of this ordinance.”
By being baptised (totally immersed in water) upon confession of their faith, in the triune name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Baptists bear audible and visible witness to their personal conversion experience.
Because Conversion is a key concept within Baptist belief systems, the nature of conversion is of great interest to Baptists.
Luke 14: 12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid.
13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,
14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
15 When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
16 But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many.
17 And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’
18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’
19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’
20 And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’
21 So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’
22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’
23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.
24 For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’ ”
Baptists have long advocated a free church within a free state. The basis of this is expressed in the term “soul competency”. The basic concept of individual soul liberty, or soul competency, is that, in matters of religion, each person has the liberty to choose what his/her conscience or soul dictates is right, and is responsible to no one but God for the decision that is made.
A person may then choose to be a Baptist, a member of another Christian denomination, an adherent to another world religion, or to choose no religious belief system, and neither the church, nor the government, nor family or friends may either make the decision or compel the person to choose otherwise. In addition, a person may change his/her mind over time. (Wikipedia)
Is soul competency the primary Baptist distinctive? Some very outstanding Baptist leaders, past and present, seem to indicate that it may be.
“…the principle of the competency of the soul in religion under God is a distinctive Baptist contribution to the world’s thought….” E. Y. Mullins (b.1860 — d.1928) model Southern Baptist educator/theologian.
“Out of this principle flow all other elements of Baptist belief….” Herschel H. Hobbs recognised Southern Baptist statesman and pastor (b.1907 — d.1995)
Baptists understand that the nature of conversion as described in the Bible endorses a view of soul competency where:
■ Individuals have a God-given ability or competency to know God.
■ God has provided this liberty for people to know God.
■ God does not force or coerce compliance with His will, he rather persuades individuals to know Him.
■ Competency and freedom or liberty automatically implies responsibility and accountability.
■ The integrity of the individual is maintained holding the individual responsible for choices. Therefore faith responses are expected from individuals rather than groups, as each one must “choose for themselves” (Joshua 24:15).
■ A concomitant of this individual soul liberty or soul competency is that government ought not in any way to impede the free exercise of the individual’s soul liberty with regard to religion. Neither should Government sponsor or endorse religious groups.
Baptists endorse Soul Liberty. However, that “soul liberty” has probably contributed to soft secularism’s distaste for institutional religion. Baptists may not have recognised themselves as becoming the perceived proponents of the very institutional religion of which they themselves have been most critical in past eras. Baptists hold to a view of the church being a “gathered community”; gathered out of the secular world through personal and individual conversion, and gathered to fellowship together contrary to the Established Churches of the various countries in which they were located. The passage that most exemplifies the charge of the Lord Jesus Christ to His disciples to gather people from the local community to Him may be that found in Luke’s gospel and the narrative surrounding the Lord Jesus’ parable of the Wedding Feast.
Luke 14: 12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid.
13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,
14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
15 When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
16 But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many.
17 And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’
18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’
19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’
20 And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’
21 So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’
22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’
23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.
24 For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’ ”
The Heart Of A Baptist
It Begins with Jesus. The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, 3 “and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding;
“Jesus.” The Baptist heart gains its life through Jesus. Baptists believe in the centrality of Jesus Christ, both in His divine-human person and in His atoning work.
Christ is central to this text and to our faith. The disciples came to Galilee and ―when they saw Him, they worshiped Him. “Why worship this man? We worship Jesus Christ because He is God; because He is our salvation; because He is our way, our truth, our life. In His person, Christ bridges the divide between God and man. In His atoning work, Christ bridges the divide between a righteous, wrathful God and sinful humanity by the propitiatory shedding of His blood. Christ, our redemption, is applied to our heart, through regeneration by the Holy Spirit, all for the glory of God. Indeed, we might even be bold enough to say that it is the life-giving blood of Jesus that courses through the Baptist heart. Yes, Baptists worship a Triune God, for we are baptized in the one name of the threefold God. Yet, unlike some evangelicals, we recognize that the Trinity is focused primarily on the glorification of the Son. The Spirit Himself glorifies Christ, and therefore, we glorify Christ. The Father Himself glorifies Christ, and therefore, we glorify Christ. Yes, we also glorify the Father because Christ glorifies the Father. Yes, we also glorify the Spirit because He, too, is God.” But the Trinity is primarily focused on glorifying the Son; therefore, we simple Biblicists primarily glorify the Son, too. Baptists are a Christocentric people. Ask a Baptist child what she believes and she will invariably begin her answer with the precious name of ―Jesus. It Begins with Jesus
It Continues With Beseeching
Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. 9 ‘Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ 10 “So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests. 11
Today this invitational approach is called being missional. What exactly is mission? Mission is the beginning of this process of entering into personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The process of inviting others into this relationship is also termed evangelism, which results in a willing change of beliefs and values, culminating in a healthy membership of a local Baptist Church.
David Bosch notes that the word ‘mission’ was used only of the Trinity in the first sixteen centuries of the Church’s existence. It was used in the context of the sending of the Son by the Father and of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son.5 By derivation it came to be used of those sent by God and sent by the Lord Jesus Christ. After His resurrection Jesus Christ said to the disciples: ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you’; or, ‘As the Father made me a missionary, so I make you ‘missionaries’ (John 20:21). The word ‘send’ is a critical one for understanding who Jesus is, as the Sent One from the Father, and what our mission is; as sent ones of the Risen Christ.
The English word ‘mission’ derives from the Latin ‘missio’, a sending. So it involves a sender, a person or persons sent by the sender, those to whom one is sent, and the assignment to be fulfilled.
The Sender concept has the presumption of authority: someone has the authority to send, someone else. This gives us a direct link with Matthew 28: 18-20, the ‘Great Commission where authority is indeed linked with sending: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations’.
Christianity (like some other world-religions) is intrinsically ‘missionary’. Mission is not an optional extra for Christians and the Church.
The sent ones have a task. Their task as designated by the scriptures is to ‘preach the gospel’ to bring good news. The imperative to mission is God’s deliverance in Jesus, In other words, evangelism is part of mission and should not be thought of as another definition of mission, but as part of it. Evangelism is the proclamation of salvation in Christ with a view ‘to leading others to turn from sin and their self-centred lives to trust, in Christ, to announce the forgiveness of sins offered in Christ and invite those who respond to become members of a community of fellow learners of Christ.”
Historically, Baptists were an offshoot of those churches formed during the Reformation in Europe. The reformation was largely a reform, movement of the Roman Catholic Church of the time, and, although some of the Reformers spoke of evangelism and mission, they largely saw their work as reform, rather than as evangelism.
Some, however, like John Calvin, were more evangelistic than has usually been depicted. According to Calvin the church has an integral role in the Missio Dei and ‘all God’s children’ must be involved in this mission. Believers have a sacred responsibility: ‘Is not that the highest honour that God could grant us, that after enabling us to feel his goodness, he should want us to become streams and conduits of his grace, that others might be participants of it?’
Baptists find their beginnings in the 16th century with a Swiss Reformer in Zurich by the name of Balthasar Hubmaier, and one of the earliest and brightest of the Anabaptists, had a different understanding. In the most significant book written on baptism in the sixteenth century, Hubmaier treated the Great Commission as if it were normative for all Christians. He repeatedly cited Matthew 28:18–20 and its parallels. According to Hubmaier, the Great Commission must be obeyed by all Christians, ―For a serious command demands serious obedience and fulfilment. Those who will not follow the commission in its entirety and in an orderly manner are disorderly and disobedient to Jesus Christ.
The Great Commission has been a central passage for believers’ churches since at least the sixteenth century." Moreover this passage was central in the early development of the critical Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and by extension, Christology. According to Balthaser Hubmaier, the earliest Anabaptist theologian, the Great Commission cannot be lightly considered, "for a serious command demands serious obedience and fulfillment."
It Continues With Obedience
Hubmaier’s comment appeared in the most important book on baptism written in the sixteenth century. Anabaptist baptism was understood as more than a mere symbol, not in the sense of being a grace-conveying sacrament but in the sense of a personal and visible commitment to testify with a holy church to a lost world. Baptism carried with it "the determination to change one’s life by the help of God."" Baptism was a symbol of commitment and a testimony of faith: "But when he receives the baptism of water the one who is baptized testifies that he has pledged himself henceforth to live according to the Rule of Christ."
"Commitment," "pledge," "determination," "submission," "obedience," "fulfillment": these terms appear again and again in the great literature of the Anabaptist movement of the sixteenth century. It pictures a profound and ongoing personal commitment to Jesus Christ within His body, the church, as it witnesses to the world. The term has three interrelated aspects. First, the term is soteriological, describing the entirety of salvation. A disciple of Jesus Christ is one who has the attitude of yieldedness to Christ. Second, the term is ecclesiological, for the disciple is integrated with the body of Christ, the church. If "disciple" represents one’s personal commitment to follow Christ, "discipline" represents the church’s commitment to follow Christ. Third, yieldedness is apologetic in intent. Those who are yielded to Christ seek to bring others to the same relationship with Christ. yieldedness begets yieldedness. Disciples beget disciples through witness to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Harold Bender said the "first and fundamental" point of the Anabaptist vision is "the essence of Christianity as discipleship .. In his book The Anabaptist Story, William R. Estep disclosed the roots of the Anabaptist movement within the Reformation. With the Protestant Reformers the Anabaptists embraced the cardinal Reformation doctrines of solo scripture, justification by faith alone, and the priesthood of all believers. But because the Reformers refused fully to carry out their call for an earnest commitment to Christ, the Anabaptists manifested consistent discipleship through their obedience to follow Christ in believers’ baptism. As a result, they formed believers’ churches that depended neither on Rome nor on the state but on Christ alone. "Baptism was held obligatory for three reasons: Christ has commanded it; it is a necessary act of personal discipleship; and it is the symbol of corporate discipleship of the visible church."
Two English separatists formed the foundation for Baptist beliefs and practises in England, John Smyth and Thomas Helwys.
Helwys wrote a book rightly honoured for its strong emphasis on religious liberty for all – whether they were heretics, Turks (Muslims), Jews ‘or whatsoever’: A Short Declaration of the Mistery of iniquity (1612). His closing appendix brings us to his strong vision of a mission to his countrymen. With what Wheeler Robinson has described as ‘the ardent spirit of a true evangelist’11, Helwys explained why he and his companions had returned from the safety of Holland to the very real danger for all nonconformists in the England of his days.
“Now as we through the grace of God, and by the warrant of his word (as we have manifested) cast away these perverters of the Holy Scriptures and their doctrines, so we wish all to do that fear God and serve the glory of his name and come and lay down their lives in their own country for Christ and his truth, and let none think that we are altogether ignorant, what building and warfare we take in hand and that we have not sat down and in some measure thoroughly considered what the cost and danger may be; and also let none think that we are without sense and feeling of our own inability to begin and our weakness to endure to the end, the weight and danger of such a work, but in all these things we hope and wait for wisdom and strength and help from the Lord.”
Helwys was imprisoned in Newgate prison 1612 and was dead by 1616. His beliefs had cost him dearly. His death in this way became a model for the Baptist cause, demonstrating that the concern for preaching the gospel to their fellow citizens, no matter what the personal cost was a high and holy value.
Later English Baptists exemplified this same heart beat;
Henry Denne at Fenstanton, a vigorous and educated Baptist leader, a former Anglican clergyman, was appointed a ‘messenger’ to be engaged in personal evangelism in other districts. Denne insisted that ‘evangelism was of the essence of Baptist churchmanship’ Hanserd Knollys (1609-91) who signed the revised version of the London Confession in 1646.) appeals to his hearers:
“Open your heart to Christ when he knocks at the Door of your souls, and calls you to come to him, to receive him, and let him come into your hearts, and dwell in your hearts by his Holy Spirit, and sanctifying Grace … Let the LORD Jesus Christ have the Throne, and be exalted above ALL in your souls, that every Thought may be brought into Captivity to the Obedience of Christ.”
John Bunyan’s (1628-88) famous classic Pilgrim‘s Progress has been interpreted as having an essentially evangelistic purpose. He wanted to reach an audience who would never listen to plain preaching so embellished his story of Christian’s journey to the Heavenly City with allegory. He wanted to evangelize the sophisticated and carnal Englishman who looked for ‘truth within a fable’ and for those who ‘read riddles’ and ‘love picking meat’. He wrote evangelistically in The Pilgrim‘s Progress by demonstrating the life’s journey of one that attains ‘the everlasting prize’.
But in 1785, the Particular Baptist minister, William Carey, burdened by the Spirit of God for the salvation of all the nations, questioned the Calvinistic truism. He was promptly accused of compromising the sovereignty of God. John Collett Ryland, a hyper-Calvinist Baptist minister, retorted, ―Sit down, young man; when God wants to convert the heathen, He‘ll do it without your help or mine.
Michael Haykin notes that Baptists first appeared in the late 1630s and early 1640s in London. By 1715, there were some 220 Baptist churches in England and Wales. During the 17th Century, they had been one of the most vigorous evangelistic bodies in the British Isles. These Baptists often referred to their local churches as “enclosed gardens.” For example, Benjamin Keach (1640–1740), a leading Baptist theologian of this period, noted that “all mankind naturally were alike dry and barren, as a wilderness, and brought forth no good fruit,” but “God hath separated some of this barren ground, to make lovely gardens for himself to walk and delight in.” Here the idea of the church as an enclosed garden functions to highlight the way Christians have been drawn out of the barrenness of this world and planted in a specific place of spiritual fruitfulness. In Keach’s words, “the Church of Christ is a garden enclosed, or a community of Christians distinct from the world.” For scriptural support, Keach turned to the Song of Solomon 4:12, which stated, “a garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse.”
During the course of the 18th Century, the passion and fire of the Baptists for evangelism began to wane, and by 1750 their number of churches had declined to about 150. The image of an enclosed garden can easily depict something that is insular, refusing to engage with what lies beyond the garden walls. So it was that far too many congregations of the English Baptist community in the 18th Century became inward-looking, closeting themselves within their meeting-houses and limiting their horizons to the maintenance of church life. The image of the enclosed garden, which had been a positive image in the 17th Century, became a picture of stagnation in the following century. Various reasons can be cited for this decline. It was illegal for Baptists to engage in mass evangelism outside of their meeting-houses, and so their money and effort began to be poured into the erection of church buildings instead of evangelistic outreach. There was also a tendency to get stuck in traditions that had had lost their efficacy. Baptists, for instance, were the only major group in 18th-Century Britain that insisted upon believer’s baptism, which, they rightly argued, is the baptism set forth in the New Testament. Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians (and later, the Methodists) all upheld infant baptism, while the Quakers dispensed with the rite altogether. Apart from a very few exceptions, the tradition was to have baptisms done outdoors in a pond, stream or river. All and sundry could come and watch what was happening and ideally the Baptists would be furnished with an excellent opportunity to bear witness to the Gospel and their distinct convictions.
However, with the building of churches and the institutionalising of the Baptist churches, their evangelistic fervour became lost, and provided a seed bed for the theological liberalism that became “the downgrade controversy.” The very intent to preserve Baptist identity became the very destroyer of that Baptist identity.
There has only ever been only one way to preserve Baptist Identity; that is by refocussing on the gospel itself and its challenge to local and world evangelism.
J.G. Oncken (1800-84) began Baptist churches in Germany and then in other European countries. His famous slogan – ‘Every Baptist a missionary‘ – was taken up by many other Baptists in succeeding ages. Mission is at the heart of Baptist Identity. It is the conviction that conversion to faith in Christ is our first responsibility that places conversion to the gospel as the core of every Baptist distinctive. The cross is not only at the centre of the universe, it is not only at the centre of God’s purposes. It is also the centre for distinctive Baptist beliefs. It all flows from the cross.
I have quoted freely from the following sources;
BenderH.S. The Anabaptist vision
Bosch, Transforming Mission, pp. 246-47.
Haykin, M The 18th Century Great Commission Resurgence Baptist Messenger December 7, 2009
The 18th Century Great Commission Resurgence: Theological Reformation, Baptist Messenger, March 22, 2010
Manley K, The beating heart of a Baptist, The Baptist Recorder Feb 2008, no. 100
Parsons, Calvin’s Preaching, pp. 209-210. This analysis of Calvin‘s teaching confirms the view of Scott Hendrix who has recently argued that the Reformers were effectively trying to re-root the faith, ‘to re-Christianize Europe‘: S. Hendrix, ‘Re-rooting the Faith: the Reformation as Re-Christianization‘, Church History 69 (2000), pp. 558-77; idem, Recultivating the Vineyard. The Reforma-tion Agendas of Christianization (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 2004). See the discussion in Parsons, Calvin’s Preaching, pp. 189-91.
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Yarnell, M, The Heart Of A Baptist Yarnell, M, The Formation of Christian Doctrine |
