As many of you know, I spend a lot of time and energy getting Sunday morning messages ready.
I also try to give my best creativity to the titles of those same sermons, as you never know when the right title will draw the person in who needs to hear it the most.
Which got me thinking . . . what are some titles I would simply never use? What are some things that while some Christian friends may believe and teach, I can’t quite agree with, much less preach on?
And here’s the result of my thinking and doodling . . . five sermons you just won’t hear at Good Shepherd:
1. Becoming Rapture Ready
2. The 6,000 Year Old Earth
3. The Republican God (and its cousin, The Democratic Jesus)
4. The Saving Power Of Infant Baptism
5. The Myth Of Eternal Damnation
There are 6 comments
What is the purpose of infant baptism?
Great question that has a couple of murky answers, which is why I’m much more comfortable with believer baptism. In the bible, baptism always follows a person’s conscious decision for Jesus.
In church history, infant baptism has suggested a number of different things. Historically, Roman Catholics have baptized babies with the understanding that the water washes away original sin and so if the infant dies its soul can still go to heaven.
Most Protestants (and many Catholics!) believe that view is more superstition than theology. So Reformed churches baptize bapies as way of passing the covenant of grace from parent to child; almost a New Testament version of circumcision.
We Wesleyan/Methodists have historically baptized babies as a way of enacting the prevenient grace already at work in the child’s life. It is also seen as a sacred rite of baptizing a child “into” the body of Christ at a particular church.
As I said, there are several answers to the question of infant baptism’s purpose.
Believer baptism in contrast is quite simple: decide for Jesus in your heart and then declare for Jesus in the water.
Thanks for the answer(s). Often wondered why I had never seen an infant baptisim as GSUMC. I was baptized as an infant as were my two children. As I view the infant baptism, as you suggested, to enact prevenient grace but also as a commitment (or recommitment) of parent, family, church to embody and surround the child with the love of God! Much like a dedication, but with the Holy Water.
All three of my children were baptized as infants at Good Shepherd. Well, actually my oldest child was baptized at Olympic High School because we didn’t have building yet.
Don Lail
My kids were baptized as infants, too.
But we didn’t have the understanding that the baptism in any way guaranteed their salvation; it was more of a good first step.
Knowing Claude as I do, I suspect he gave you all the same teaching for your girls.
Our daughter in particular wishes we had waited so she could have the experience of immersion baptism herself. She still may pursue that anyway.
Actually, the teaching came from my Dad. He liked to tell the story of the Lutheran preacher who told my grandfather that his twin daughters would go to hell if they died before they were baptized. My grandfather told the preacher he was full of crap, but used a little more colorful language. It bothers me somewhat that there seems to be this not so subtle suggestion that “infant” baptism is – How should I say this? – “less than ideal”. Growing up Methodist, I saw many “infant” baptisms. I’m willing to bet that 100% of those parent thought they were doing a good thing.
I had a good friend in high school who was the son of a Baptist preacher. He used to argue that I had not really been baptized because I had not been fully immersed. He married a Methodist girl and now attends her church. Go figure.