This article is the third in a series entitled Worship in community, exploring the interaction between the worship of the church community and the relationships between the people in that community. Previous articles introduced this series and explored the historic Baptist practice of forming church covenants. This article turns to that most foundational of Baptist practices, baptism. Read the other columns here.
When talking about the meaning and significance of baptism, we often focus on the individual being baptised and the importance of a personal faith-decision in order to be baptised. While not minimising the importance of this individual dimension, I want to explore in this article the ways that baptism brings the individual and the community together; joining the individual to the community, the community to the individual, and the people of the church to each other and the world around them.
Baptism Joins the Individual to the Community
Baptism has a horizontal as well as a vertical dimension. While we often think of the vertical aspect of baptism, that baptism is an outward expression of an individual joining themselves to Christ, we often neglect the horizontal dimension, that the one being baptised is not just joined to Christ, but also to Christ’s body, the church community. This is not to deny the importance of the vertical aspect of baptism, that in baptism there is a genuine participation in the life and death of Jesus, but rather it is a consequence of the conviction that the vertical dimension necessarily also has a horizontal dimension. To be united with Christ is to be united with Christ’s body the church.
In contrast to this communal understanding of baptism, the Baptist focus on believers’ baptism has sometimes given an individualistic focus to Baptist practice and theology. Baptism becomes a representation of an individual’s decision to follow Christ, a response to the working of God’s grace in their personal lives. Inclusion in the community is a secondary and consequential result of their individual response. However, one way that the communal understanding of baptism is seen in Baptist thought is through the link between baptism and church membership. While some Baptist churches allow for membership of those who are not baptised, in most cases baptism is the occasion in which a person also becomes a church member. In this way, baptism is the marker of entry into the church, analogous to an initiation ceremony.
We must be careful, however, not to disconnect baptism, or church membership for that matter, from an ongoing life of discipleship. Baptism is a discrete point in time marking entry into the community, but it is also part of a much larger and ongoing process in the life of the believer as they grow in faith and obedience. It is not the end of the process, or necessarily the beginning, but rather a marker along the way. This view of baptism as a marker along a longer journey can help to overcome the exclusionary nature of baptism, for while baptism is a rite of inclusion it can also be seen as exclusionary, as it excludes from the community those who are not yet baptised.
A solution for overcoming this sense of exclusion is not to remove the boundary between the baptised and the non-baptised but to see it as an open boundary. Those present in the community who are not yet baptised are still valued parts of the community, they are just at a different part of the journey than those who have been baptised. There is space in the community of faith for those who are on the journey of faith but not yet baptised, including the children of believers within the community. While not yet full members of Christ’s body, they can be embraced by the body, as a guest or visitor in the household of faith. They can become as close as a family member even though they are not yet family. Baptism as initiation into an ongoing process of discipleship also allows for Baptist churches to embrace those baptised as infants, recognising that, while baptism is an important step in this process of faith, different traditions place this step at different points of the process.
Baptism Joins the Community to the Individual
Baptism is not just an act of the individual joining the community but also an act of the community joining or orientating themselves towards the one being baptised. The act of baptism changes the way the community sees the individual. They are now a part of the whole, a fully-fledged member of the body of Christ, equal to everyone else and able to participate fully in the life of the community. Even more than this change in status, baptism changes the way the identity of the individual is perceived by the community. No longer is their identity found primarily in their personal characteristics or situation, but they are seen primarily as one who is connected to Christ and therefore connected to the community. Not only does the individual find their identity in the community, but there is a sense in which the community finds its identity in relation to the individual. The community is formed anew as it embraces the one who is baptised for it is only in encompassing the one that the many are able to exist as the body of Christ.[i]
The link between the community and the individual is seen most clearly in the practice of infant baptism and Baptists’ rejection of infant baptism can lead to this aspect of baptism being underemphasised or lost entirely. It is the faith of the community that gives the act of infant baptism its meaning and significance, allowing it to function as a sign of the grace that has been and will continue to work in the child’s life to bring them to their own knowledge of salvation. Without needing to change their views of baptism, it is important for Baptists to remember this aspect of the community embracing the individual as it helps to emphasise that all forms of baptism, whether infant or adult, are always a response brought about by a movement of the Spirit. Christ is present and active in baptism by the Spirit’s presence in the community.
A greater emphasis on the way that the community mediates the presence of God in baptism can help to reinforce the important role the church community plays in baptism. Baptism is an action of the Christian community that becomes the substance by which God is able to act in the life of the believer. For Baptists, it is the community, and the relationships within it, which are the context in which God chooses to act. It is not the medium of the water or the priestly authority of the person performing the baptism that makes it effective, but rather the presence of God’s Spirit in the community that makes the waters of baptism effective as a site of both symbolic meaning and powerful activity. Baptism, then, requires the presence of the community if it is to truly represent and embody the fullness of its significance. This shifts the congregation from being passive spectators, as has sometimes been the case in Baptist practice, to make baptism an occasion in which the whole congregation participates in the communion with Christ that is being symbolised and enacted by the one being baptised.
Baptism Connects the Whole Community to Each Other
The impact of baptism goes beyond the one being baptised as the Spirit works in the moment of baptism to renew and reform the church as the community of the baptised. Baptism reminds the whole church of their own baptism, reminding them that they are saved by grace and preaching the gospel again to both believers and non-believers alike. In every act of baptism the community acknowledges their common death to sin in Christ’s death and a common life in Christ’s resurrection. They declare that they have a shared participation in Christ’s death and resurrection. They recognise that their identity as the body of Christ is a corporate identity. It is only together with others that they can speak of being united with Christ and take on this identity as Christ’s body. The boundaries that previously kept people separate are overcome as they discover a new unity in diversity through their common identity in Christ.
Therefore, baptism is not just a symbol of individual salvation, but the salvation symbolised by baptism is a community building event. Baptism serves to declare again the importance of the community. It reinforces that the church is not a collection of saved individuals but rather a redeemed or reformed community.
Baptist theologian Elizabeth Newman compares baptism to the people of Israel passing through the Red Sea; just as the Israelites passed through the Red Sea to freedom so too “in baptism, God’s people leave behind all that binds them so that they might enter into the freedom of communion with one another in and with the Triune God.”[ii] Baptism physically displays the cosmic significance of Christ’s victory over the powers that keep humanity captive. It reminds the community that they are a part of the new creation, living as an anticipation of it as they participate in Christ’s victory through their connection with Christ.
Baptism Connects the Church to the World
As well as reinforcing the internal unity of the church, baptism also reminds the church of its connection to the whole created order. In using a part of creation (i.e. water) to communicate the truths of God’s working in the life of the one baptised, baptism reminds the church that God takes the ordinary things of this world and uses them for God’s purposes. This includes the church itself. The church is a collection of ordinary people and yet God uses them for God’s purposes. Baptism also serves to remind the church of its responsibility to care for God’s creation. Water is essential for life and the use of water in this spiritual practice overcomes any sense of dualism between the physical and spiritual worlds. God is concerned about the physical world and makes use of it to achieve God’s purposes.
More specifically, baptism also reminds the church of its connection with the rest of humanity, for just as Jesus’ baptism was the start of his public ministry so too baptism should lead the church out into the world. In baptism the Spirit turns those in the church outward to remind them that they enter into the new humanity not for their own sakes but for the sake of the world. Therefore, the boundary of baptism does not seal off the community of the baptised from others, but rather bears witness to others as a means of drawing them into the community, testifying that the community of Christ is open to all.
Baptism in practice
Baptism can be a community-building event for the whole church, reinforcing the connections that they have with each other and beyond this to the world around them. As the local church community practices baptism in its relational context, it reminds itself of the nature and importance of the interpersonal relationships within the church and that these relationships are an important aspect of the church’s own salvation and witness in the world.
Therefore, it seems to me that baptism in a Baptist context should never be an isolated or individual event but is best conducted in the context of a church service, with the church community present. The person being baptised should be known to the congregation, with at least some level of relationship so they are able to make an informed commitment to this particular local expression of the church. This commitment can be practically demonstrated by formalising the relationship with the church community through church membership.
By emphasising the centrality of grace, and a common need for salvation, baptism can also encourage the church community to move outward beyond the boundaries of the church to share the message of salvation, embodied in baptism, with those who have not yet received it. Baptism’s function as a boundary marker is not to exclude from the community those who are not yet baptised, but rather to highlight the ongoing process of faith formation and the role of baptism as a unique marker along this progression.
Image: Supplied by Andrew Baldwin
Other columns in this series
Worship in community: setting the scene
Worship in community: what’s membership got to do with it?
[i] This understanding is reinforced by taking Paul’s comments about a new creation in 2 Cor 5:17 to indicate the creation of a new community, rather than just the creation of a new individual. That is, the community is made anew in the inclusion of this one who is now in Christ. Andrew Picard, Colin Gunton’s Trinitarian Theology of Culture (T&T Clark, 2024), 222.
[ii] Elizabeth Newman, “Baptism: The Substance and the Sign,” in Gathering Together: Baptists at Work in Worship, ed. Rodney Wallace Kennedy and Derek C. Hatch (Pickwick Publications, 2013), 120.
Sources
Ellis, Christopher J. Gathering: A Theology and Spirituality of Worship in Free Church Tradition. SCM Press, 2004.
Fiddes, Paul S. Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology. Paternoster Press, 2003.
Greggs, Tom. Dogmatic Ecclesiology: The Priestly Catholicity of the Church. Vol. 1. Baker Academic, 2019.
Holmes, Stephen R. Baptist Theology. T&T Clark, 2012.
Nelson, Sally. “‘The Water Buries Like a Tomb’: Baptists and Baptism.” Pages 112–26 in Gathering Disciples: Essays in Honor of Christopher J. Ellis. Edited by Myra Blyth and Andy Goodliff. Pickwick Publications, 2017.
Newman, Elizabeth. “Baptism: The Substance and the Sign.” Pages 110–24 in Gathering Together: Baptists at Work in Worship. Edited by Rodney Wallace Kennedy and Derek C. Hatch. Pickwick Publications, 2013.
Picard, Andrew. Colin Gunton’s Trinitarian Theology of Culture. T&T Clark, 2024.
