More About Children and Baptism

This Sunday’s sermon was a break from our current series. Pastor Joe charted the direction we’re headed concerning children and baptism — When should we baptize believing children? 

At first glance it might seem simple — Well, you baptize them when they believe — but the complexity comes in how we discern whether a child’s profession of faith is credible. And that’s a complexity because of how badly it has been handled in some Evangelical traditions in America. False conversions are a problem in our country. Many children grow into adulthood assuming they’re Christians when they’re not — and many assume they’re Christians solely because they were baptized as kids. This topic, as you can see, has a lot to do with discipleship, and then with the nature of the church, and then with parenting. It’s a big deal, y’all.

So after a lot of thinking and praying and meeting, the pastors have decided that it is most biblically sound and responsible for us to baptize children when they profess faith in Jesus, provided that the meaning of baptism is faithfully taught and intentional discipleship follows.

Because this has so many implications for the life of our church, we hosted a Q & A on Sunday afternoon to chat more about it and interact with some questions: