Communion at my church is a weekly activity done as part of the worship experience. At various “cross” stations around the room people can go to a cross, take communion, and get prayed for.
It’s a ironic that what is intended to be the ultimate expression of unified community, can quickly take the form of solitary penance. I guess we have to keep fighting for both expressions.
Regardless, I love the new Communion cards.
— C.T. Studd (via eyesoffaith)
I love baptism services at Rockharbor. Usually there are 20 to 30 people who have taken a baptism class and are accompanied by their friends, family or lifegroup up on stage. At our church, baptism is more like rowdy pub than fine dining. People are hooting and hollering, cheering at the top of their lungs, drowning out the already loud worship band.
However, what really gets me is the random group of people who are so moved that they decide right then and there, “I need to be baptized too.” Those crazy few run up to the stage and practically jump into the baptismal (normally called an inflatable kiddie pool). Friends are shocked and often teary eyed. Strangers hoot and holler.
It’s the kind of joy and enthusiasm I picture in the early Church and exactly what I’ve prayed for many of my family and friends to experience.
I know most Christians don’t get so excited about baptism, but I think there’s a huge problem in our theology of baptism.
Chris Ward, one of RH’s teaching pastors, did a great job of leading us through the OT starting at the fall of man, Ezekiel 36’s foreshadowing, the Gentile conversion process via ritualistic washing, to John the Baptist and Jesus. He concluded by likening baptism to a wedding ceremony. Not a perfect quote, but essentially his point was, “Baptism does not save us. It is the symbol of our inner renewal.”
While Chris did make it clear that he didn’t have time to fully dive into all the complexity of the topic, I feel we miss a critical point: Baptism is more than just a fancy wedding ceremony, what lies at the heart of the matter are the wedding vows.
1 Peter 3 makes the point that Baptism is our “pledge of good conscience toward God” and just as water cleansed and saved Noah during the flood, so the water of Baptism cleanses and saves us.
I get the symbolism part. It’s not magical. We use a kiddie pool for goodness sake. However, I do feel like we should give it more weight than we do. For example, are eight year olds really capable of making a lifelong vow to follow Jesus? What would we think of a 3rd grader who insisted she was ready to be married? Shouldn’t we affirm their pursuit of Jesus but insist they wait to be baptized until they are of a more capable age?
I know this is sticky and messy, but there is enough scripture (Hebrews 6:4-6, Hebrews 10:26-27, 2 Peter 2:20-22) that makes it clear that people can indeed reject so great a gift after experiencing the cleansing of the Spirit. Shouldn’t we affirm the sacredness of Baptism and celebrate the gravity of that decision rather than treat it so lightly that we allow people to mistake the “I do” for an “everyone else is doing it”.
Then there’s 1 Corinthians 15:29: Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?
Huh? I’ve read the commentaries that explain that the dead are plural and it might be a better translation to say “baptized in place of the dead” referring the Christians who join the ranks to replace fallen martyrs. There’s so much of the Bible that I don’t understand. I’d love someone to give me a more thorough explanation.
Given Jesus’s final command to go into all the world and make disciples and BAPTIZE, why does the Apostle Paul say in 1 Corinthians 1:17 that Jesus didn’t send him to baptize, but to preach the gospel. For some reason, I thought those two items were related.
I’d love to hear more opinions (that are biblically based) without getting into arguments. If you disagree, please tell my why (from a biblical basis).
After spending my entire life in the Church, I'm realizing that I don't have meaningful spiritual conversations. I find either surface level conflict-avoidance, or philosophically charged pointless debate. This is my attempt to make sense of of the conflict I feel toward the modern "church" and yet strengthen and uphold eternal Church. Not sure what that looks like yet.
