Wilderness Road Baptist Assembly

In the next several posts I would like to address a facet of church life that has changed almost without notice regarding baptism.  I came to know Christ in the fall of 1974 and I along with many others, who had done likewise that winter, waited to be baptized when the weather had warmed sufficiently. Then one chilly Sunday April afternoon, I along with the others were baptized in a cold mountain stream here in mountains of southwestern Virginia. I can vividly remember the church members gathered on the banks of the stream, the hymns being sung, the pastor exhorting us from the Scriptures, telling us of the joy of following Christ and what our baptism pictured. He then prayed for us and along with the help of two other men of the church performed the ordinance. This was a common scene in those days, on any given Sunday you might see churches gathered on the banks of streams and rivers while baptism was administered. But that type of scene is quickly becoming a thing of the past for a number of reasons.

Outdoor baptisms are readily seen in the opening chapters of the Gospels and the Book of Acts and referenced throughout the New Testament. Nevertheless, I am not particularly aware of any merit of performing baptisms outdoors or indoors and I am not condemning the indoor practice, in over 25 years of ministry I have done them both. I realize that baptizing in streams, rivers, lakes and ponds was done primarily out of necessity in earlier times and that now we have become accustomed to more modern facilities. However, that facet of church life has all but fallen out of vogue in one generation within contemporary American evangelicalism. In the next several posts I hope to identify some of the reasons why this has happened, why it matters and some things for us to consider.

A recent article in USA Today caught my eye and although the theology was very poor the title of the article grabbed my attention: Outdoor Baptisms Dwindling. Here is the section that if found most interesting and gives three reasons for the change.

“Outdoor baptisms are rapidly disappearing in America. Once prevalent in the rivers and deltas of the South, the ritual has been nearly extinguished by indoor pools, mega-churches and modernization, researchers and ministers say. Only a handful of churches keep it alive.  “It’s a feature of American Protestantism that is vanishing,” says David Daniels, professor of church history at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.”

The article continues by saying:

“No one keeps statistics on outdoor baptisms, which are performed predominately by Baptists and Pentecostals. But officials at the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest grouping of Baptist churches in the USA, say of the 342,000 baptisms performed last year by its member churches, the majority were done indoors. “Most churches, even small ones, have indoor baptisteries,” says Rob Phillips, a spokesman for LifeWay Christian Resources, the SBC’s publishing and research arm. “That’s culturally the way folks do it these days.“

Gradually those little gatherings, that I spoke of in my first post, began to vanish almost unnoticed and as the article in USA Today states they have been “nearly extinguished by indoor pools, mega-churches and modernization“. The reasons for this shift in trends is summed up very well in one paragraph.

“In the 1950s, churches modernized to draw more parishioners and began constructing indoor pools for baptisms, Lee says. Later, as thousand-seat mega-churches began replacing smaller, rural churches, outdoor baptisms further dwindled, he says. “We now have a whole generation of churchgoers who grew up in mega-churches, where indoor baptisms are the norm,” Lee says. “Outdoor baptisms just don’t resonate anymore.” According to the article Shayne Lee is the assistant professor of Sociology and African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University.

So, supposing the article is correct, the churches 50 to 60 years ago saw modernization as a means of gaining a larger congregation and consequently began building indoor baptistries to accomodate their swelling numbers. Thus the smaller congregations who could not afford modernization began to diminish and along with it the practice of outdoor baptisms.

In the previous two posts we have covered the fact that outdoor baptisms are quickly vanishing from the evangelical landscape and the three reasons for this trend. Today I would like to give us seven reasons we should consider outdoor baptisms and the added benefit that can be derived from performing this ordinance out-of-doors. This list is not extensive but it may give way to some other considerations about the subject.

1. Let’s face it most people in our communities don’t associate the word “church” with real people, they associate “church” with a building. Outdoor baptisms allow the public to actually see a physical manifestation of a group of people who call themselves Christians outside of the confines of the four walls of a “church building” and gathered as a body.

2. “A picture is worth a thousand words”- performing baptism outdoors allows the public to see a physical manifestation of the gospel pictured in baptism. An outdoor baptism brings the gospel to focus and clearly sets forth the picture of the death, burial and resurrection. It attests to Christ work for us and also His work in us as believers. It opens doors for questions and opportunity to share the gospel of Christ.

3. Baptizing outdoors allows people to see that the church is not ashamed of the gospel it says it believes and that it places an emphasis on following Christ in baptism. I have been to many churches where baptism was hurried through or pushed to the end of the service. For those people who are submitting themselves to be baptised it is a very important day and should serve as a milepost in their walk with Christ. As a church we should make it an important issue as well.

4. Baptizing out-of-doors sends a message that being a Christian necessitates a public identification with Christ, the gospel and the local assembly. Many people have the idea that just going to church makes them a Christian, a baptism done in a public place reveals that to follow Christ is more than simply warming a pew.

5. Those people submitting to baptism in this way have an opportunity to publicly profess Christ before the church and before the world. They can invite friends and relatives who would not normally attend a church service.

6. Performing baptisms in this way enables the church to take their Christianity out in the open and publicly open the Scriptures, sing hymns, pray and administer baptism outside of the confines of the church building. This may give some of your members a whole new perspective on what it means to be a Christian in the midst of an unbelieving world.

7. When a church participates corporately in an act of public obedience to Christ and His Word it allows them to bear the reproach of Christ and the gospel as a corporate body. This creates a special kind of unity and fellowship in a different light . This kind of “fellowship in the gospel” allows them to understand in a more vivid way that they are called out of this world and the reality that this calling creates.

Although I am aware that there are certain drawbacks to public baptisms, I am equally sure that there are benefits as well.