Leading What Christ Gave His Church
Some of the most important things a pastor does take only a few minutes. He lowers a new believer into the water. He breaks bread and reminds a church that Christ died for it. He stands with young parents. He plans an hour in which God's people will sing, pray, give, and hear the Word. None of this is routine to the people in the room. A believer is baptized once, and he will remember that morning for the rest of his life.
Paul praised the church at Corinth because it worked to keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you (1 Corinthians 11:2). A few chapters later he gave one rule for every gathering of the church.
“Let all things be done decently and in order.”1 CORINTHIANS 14:40 · KJV
This study is about how. The doctrine is taught elsewhere, in Believer's Baptism, The Lord's Supper, and The Two Ordinances, and preaching has its own series. Here we stand beside the pastor and ask what he does with his hands and his words, so that every act is biblical, orderly, and reverent.
A practice that Jesus Christ Himself commanded His church to keep. There are two: believer's baptism and the Lord's Supper. An ordinance pictures what Christ has done. It gives no saving grace.
A pastor's hands add nothing to the water or the bread. He cannot wash away sin or change what is on the table. Christ gave the ordinances to His church (Matthew 28:19; 1 Corinthians 11:23), and the pastor serves them as one of the stewards of the mysteries of God, and it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful (1 Corinthians 4:1–2).
A pastor can fail here in two ways. One is carelessness: a baptism squeezed in with no preparation, a Table served as an afterthought, a service thrown together on Saturday night. The other is superstition: treating water, bread, or a pastor's prayer as if the power were in them. The way between them is reverence with understanding. Every person in the room should know what is happening, why it is happening, and who it points to.
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For Deeper Study
- The Star Book for MinistersAmazon Edward T. HiscoxA classic Baptist minister's handbook, older in style but still useful for the forms of church services.
- The Baptist Church ManualAmazon J. Newton BrownA nineteenth-century Baptist manual on church order and practice.
- Believer's Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in ChristAmazon Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright, editorsA thorough defense of believer's baptism. Many of its writers are Calvinistic Baptists, and we differ with them there.
- The Invitation SystemAmazon Iain H. MurrayA short Reformed critique of the public invitation. We differ on that and on Calvinism, but its warning about false assurance deserves a hearing.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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Believer's Baptism by Immersion
Baptism is for those who have believed, by immersion, picturing the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. It follows salvation; it does not cause it. Infant baptism is a later departure from the New Testament.
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