A few days ago, the kids and I were talking about baptism. A lady in our small group was baptized and they got to witness it (which was pretty cool for them). They were excited and wanted to know more about it. So we talked for a while (and maybe weirded out some folks in the store parking lot).
Along the way, one of the kids mentioned that, of course, someday she’s going to get baptized. After all, she goes to church.
Now obviously, I’d love for my kids to be baptized someday. But as I told them that night, and have told them in the past, baptism isn’t something you do just because you go to church. Lots of people go to church who aren’t baptized and should be. There are also lots of people who have been baptized and probably shouldn’t have been.
After all, baptism is best understood as “sign that both portrays a believer’s union with Christ and effects a new horizontal union, joining together the believer and the church” (Understanding Baptism, 15). Which means that if you’re not united with Christ, you should not be baptized until you are. In the same way, if there is no desire to identify with God’s people (the church in the local and universal senses), it should probably raise a flag.
And this is what I told our kids. While I would love them to be baptized someday, this is not something we will ever force them to do. Not without them first having a genuine faith of their own in Christ (something we also don’t assume exists now[1. Nor is it something we try to “make” happen, since we can’t.])
I look forward to the day when our kids come to Emily and me and say they want to be baptized because they know Jesus is Lord and has died for their sins. And more than look forward to it, I pray that the day will come. But until then, my job is to keep reminding them of what they need to know about who should be baptized in a way that makes sense according to their ages.
Going to church isn’t enough. Having knowledge about God isn’t enough. Until your heart has been given new life by Christ, there is no good reason to be baptized. But once it has been, I pray nothing will stand in the way.
None of us, of course, should be surprised that Furtick and Elevation would meticulously plan out such things—after all, anyone who has read Furtick’s books or heard him speak anywhere would be painfully aware of his Revivalist, um, “exuberance.” The first time I heard him speak was at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit a few years back where he demoed the power of Spirit Keys to set the mood during a worship gathering (and I hated Spirit Keys ever since).
Obviously there’s a lot more to be concerned about with Furtick than the spontaneous baptism issue (I’ll spare you my laundry list)—but the spontaneous baptism issue is an important one. While we see a few instances of spontaneous baptism in Scripture, which should lead us to be cautious of completely ruling it out as a practice in all circumstances, it’s still something we need to be careful of.
A bit of backstory: I was baptized in a more-or-less spontaneous situation. I’d been a Christian for about three months at that point and knew it was something I should do, but didn’t know when. One weekend in August 2005, the church we attended was performing baptisms (the majority of which were planned in advance). Emily and I watched each person and as we did, I felt compelled to get baptized. So Emily and I both talked to the youth pastor, asked if we could, the pastor got back into his wet pants, we shared what God had been doing in our lives—how He brought us to faith, how the gospel changed us—and then we were baptized.
The church I was baptized in was careful—their wasn’t a pressure for us to get baptized right away. There wasn’t an overly emotional appeal at the end, although they did invite people to come forward if they felt the Holy Spirit compel them to do so (which is fairly typical for most evangelical churches these days from what I can tell).
As you can imagine, the whole conversation is very personal to me. But here’s where I land, for what it’s worth: we should be very, very cautious to baptize anyone too quickly. I’d rather wait and (as best as any of us are able) be sure that someone is truly saved, is bearing fruit (even if it’s a tiny amount) and understands the significance of the sacrament.
What Furtick’s approach (and the revivalist mindset in general) reveals is a deficient understanding of this essential sacrament. But Furtick isn’t alone in this. We laughingly call baptism getting a bath, or getting dunked… When we’re being serious, we tend to stick to the now standard “outward declaration of an inward transformation” definition.
And while this elevator speech version is certainly true, we need to more fully express what that “inward transformation” entails. J. I. Packer’s definition of baptism is exceptionally helpful in this regard:
Christian baptism, which has the form of a ceremonial washing (like John’s pre-Christian baptism), is a sign from God that signifies inward cleansing and remission of sins (Acts 22:16; 1 Cor. 6:11; Eph. 5:25–27), Spirit-wrought regeneration and new life (Titus 3:5), and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit as God’s seal testifying and guaranteeing that one will be kept safe in Christ forever (1 Cor. 12:13; Eph. 1:13–14). Baptism carries these meanings because first and fundamentally it signifies union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6:3–7; Col. 2:11–12); and this union with Christ is the source of every element in our salvation (1 John 5:11–12). Receiving the sign in faith assures the persons baptized that God’s gift of new life in Christ is freely given to them. At the same time, it commits them to live henceforth in a new way as committed disciples of Jesus. Baptism signifies a watershed point in a human life because it signifies a new-creational ingrafting into Christ’s risen life. [1. J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: a Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs]
While a convert doesn’t necessarily have to understand all the implications of this reality, if they understand none of it—if they’re compelled only by an emotional experience, if there is no credible evidence of Spirit-borne fruit, if there’s no evidence they understand the gospel at all—then we are absolutely right to have a nasty case of the heebie jeebies. Baptism signifies our union with Christ, the forgiveness of our sins and is a commitment to living as one of His disciples. When people just take a bath, they’re missing the point. And when we encourage them to do so, so are we.
