Baptism, Membership, and Christian Initiation

This article in a nutshell: This article is about the official paper on baptism adopted by the 1996 General Conference and related issues. You may read the whole article, or you may go to any one of the following headings by clicking on the headings below:

What Led to the Baptism Paper, By Water and the Spirit

By Water and the Spirit: An Official Interpretive Tool

By Water and the Spirit and The United Methodist Book of Discipline, 1996

Incorporating New Understandings of Baptism

Welcoming Strangers and Seekers to the Life of Faith

What Is Christian Initiation?

The Christian Initiation Series

By Water and the Spirit (pdf)

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In Utah, a mother and father, neither practicing their childhood religions (Mormon and Roman Catholic) ask for their infant daughter to be baptized.

In Minnesota, a family asks the pastor if they can have "godparents" stand with them at the baptism of their baby.

In California, a former atheist attends worship for the first time and asks for help in finding God and life in the Christian community.

In Ohio, members of the congregation renew their baptismal vows and celebrate a reaffirmation of the baptismal covenant on the Sunday after the Epiphany.

In Georgia, a woman asks to be "rebaptized"; her pastor guides her toward reaffirmation of the baptismal covenant.

In Texas, a congregation agrees to spend the weeks of Lent studying Christian basics. The pastor suggests that they use the study edition of the official interpretive statement on baptism, By Water and the Spirit: Making Connections for Identity and Ministry.What do these situations have in common, and how do they relate to the mission of God in the world?

God is seeking people, and people are seeking God — that is at the heart of our understanding of our mission as the church. It is also at the heart of baptism and all that we do in the congregation to initiate people into a life in Christ. When, in the name of God, we welcome and baptize people, God is acting to initiate those people into the covenant community. When we invite people to respond in faith and to profess their intention to follow Jesus Christ, we invite them to share with us in a covenant to be remembered, affirmed, and lived out in love for God and neighbor. Baptism is more than mere ceremony. Baptism is a life-shaping event. It is at the heart of the Christian journey and ministry. Baptism gives shape to the identity of Christian people and connects them to one another and to lives of service.

For United Methodists, baptism becomes real through the rituals we enact, the relationships we covenant to keep, the doctrine we teach, the order of life through our shared disciplines, the forms and records we keep, and the certificates we give. The pastor is responsible for overseeing these aspects of church life.

What Led to the Baptism Paper, By Water and the Spirit?

United Methodists have witnessed the emergence of distinctly different services of baptism. The changes were not merely cosmetic. They went to the heart of United Methodist understanding of the church, of salvation, and of ministry. The church first adopted new services of the baptismal covenant in 1984 (The Book of Services). These official services were included in "General Services" in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) and in The United Methodist Book of Worship (1992). For most United Methodist congregations, these services were quite different in language and actions. The introduction to these services in The United Methodist Book of Worship offers help in appreciating and using the services. Additional help in interpreting and using the baptismal services is available in The Worship Resources of The United Methodist Hymnal.

The 1988 General Conference recognized that these baptismal services moved the church in directions that required study and fresh understandings, and it directed that a committee be established to study the meaning of baptism as it relates to confirmation and other rites of the church.

By Water and the Spirit: An Official Interpretive Tool

The 1996 General Conference adopted a revised version of By Water and the Spirit: A United Methodist Understanding of Baptismas an official interpretive statement about baptism and related rites.

In adopting this official statement on baptism, the General Conference invited all United Methodists to recover the fullness of our sacramental and evangelical heritage. The adoption of the paper did not mean that everyone in the church understands or agrees with By Water and the Spirit. Rather, its adoption was a call to participate in a journey of discovering what it means to be a baptized and a baptizing people.

The paper is about much more than baptism. It is about God and what God is doing; about who we are and what we need; about our identity and vision. By Water and the Spiritconcerns how we care for one another and how we reach out to others so they share in the grace of God. The paper speaks about how we understand and deal with sin, marriage, ministry, growth, and death. The paper is about us — our values and the deep spiritual resources we rely upon.

The foundational assertion of the paper is that our Wesleyan heritage is a dynamic balance of the sacramental and the evangelical that takes into account God's gift of unfailing grace and the necessity of the human response of faith.

John Wesley believed and taught that, in baptism, people — whether infants or adults — are "cleansed of the guilt of sin, initiated into the covenant with God, admitted into the Church, made an heir of the divine kingdom, and spiritually born anew." Wesley also firmly upheld the necessity of adult conversion. "Without personal decision and commitment to Christ, the baptismal gift is rendered ineffective." (By Water and the Spirit,) Over time, "[this] creative Wesleyan synthesis of sacramentalism and evangelicalism was torn asunder and both its elements devalued" (By Water and the Spirit).

By Water and the Spiritclarifies our understanding of concepts and terms such as sacramental, evangelical, baptismal covenant, God's initiative, necessity of response of faith, confirmation, means of grace, nurture, and baptism's relation to other rites of the church. The paper serves as a guide for teaching about baptism. Its interpretation of baptism and related rites is recommended to all who interpret or administer the sacraments.

Incorporating New Understandings of Baptism

The church is a community born of water and the Spirit. Those appointed to lead congregations bear an essential role in supporting all baptized people in continuous transformation required by God's reign in daily life. "Baptism is a crucial threshold that we cross on our journey of faith," states the paper. "But there are many others, including the final transition from death to eternal life. Through baptism we are incorporated into the ongoing history of Christ's mission, and we are identified and made participants in God's new history in Jesus Christ and the new age that Christ is bringing" (By Water and the Spirit).

Congregational leaders have the complex task of leading the congregation to reach out, welcome, and nurture people so that they cross that threshold and participate in God's reign in worship and witness. In a changing culture, pastors and other leaders must be bold and visionary in finding ways to help the congregation walk with those seeking God. Christian initiation as a sacramental and evangelical journey is not a sideline or an elective; it is the very core of the way the congregation lives and serves.

Welcoming Strangers and Seekers to the Life of Faith

Congregations can no longer assume that society provides people with any significant contact with Christian tradition and faith. More and more people seeking God come to church with little, if any, previous experience with a religious group or tradition. The life, experience, and faith of the church are "culturally distant" from many people's experience.

A majority of our churches report no adult baptisms and few professions of faith, yet Christ's gracious invitation and call to discipleship are undiminished. The churches of the future will be churches that are prepared to welcome adult seekers to the life of faith. The churches of the future must be prepared and empowered to walk with people on a journey of conversion and formation as disciples of Jesus Christ. By Water and the Spiritstates, "Adult baptism is the norm when the Church is in a missionary situation, reaching out to persons in a culture which is indifferent or hostile to the faith. While the baptism of infants is appropriate for Christian families, the increasingly minority status of the Church in contemporary society demands more attention to evangelizing, nurturing, and baptizing adult converts."

The Discipline has clearly affirmed that "The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ." Part of the Discipleship Ministries's response is "The Christian Initiation Project." This project offers resources and orientation to pastors and congregations for the work of evangelizing, nurturing, and baptizing adult seekers as Christian disciples.

What Is Christian Initiation?

Christian initiation is an accompanied journey. In Christian initiation, the congregation reaches out to and welcomes those who are on a search for meaning, belonging and God. Baptism is the center point of Christian initiation. The congregation walks with seekers as they discover their thirst for the living water, Jesus Christ. Sponsors and teachers represent the congregation's care and love for candidates as they move toward the waters of baptism. In worship, the congregation welcomes and celebrates people's growing faith.

Christian initiation is a process of forming people in the life of discipleship. This process is ordered in a series of stages and services. During the process, men and women:

• encounter the good news of Jesus and discern their desire to know it more fully.
• inquire about the journey of conversion.
• receive instruction and formation in the way of faith and discipleship.
• reach a decision to be baptized or to reaffirm baptism.
• study and prepare for baptism.
• receive baptism as the rite of initiation into the people of God and life in the Spirit.
• enter fully into the life and ministry of the church.
  

Christian initiation is central to the congregation's way of life. Christian initiation is not a program that the congregation can plug in for a while and then unplug. Christian initiation has to do with the congregation's whole way of life in fulfilling its primary task. The congregation embraces and deepens its own conversion journey by continuously welcoming, forming, and commissioning others in its ongoing worship, reflection on Scripture, prayer, and ministry with the poor and marginalized.

Christian initiation requires visionary spiritual leadership from the pastor. While the processes of initiation belong to the Holy Spirit working through the people of God, the pastor leads the congregation in this recovery of its fundamental task of making new disciples. However, it is a process that the laity must embody in its care of people God is drawing to God's self.

The Christian Initiation Series

Discipleship Ministries has prepared basic resources to assist churches in retooling themselves for welcoming seekers and forming Christian disciples. You can read more about each of these resources by clicking on the book titles below.

By Water and the Spirit-- a study editionby Gayle C. Felton

Please also see By Water and the Spirit (pdf -- free download)

Come to the Watersby Daniel Benedict

For more information about baptism and Christian initiation, contact Taylor Burton-Edwards, the Discipleship Ministries, PO Box 340003, Nashville, TN 37203-0003.