Improving Your Baptism: Teach the Next Generation How - Brad Anderson

Twenty years ago Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton released the findings of their study yon youth and religion stating that the default religion of modern adolescence is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). In this religion a god exists that created and watches over the earth; this god wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other; this god is not directly involved in the daily lives of humans; the goal of life is to be happy; and good people go to heaven when they die. This god is not the God of the Bible, yet they showed MTD cannot stand on its own as a religious structure. It needs a community from which to steal life and vitality, so “its adherents are affiliated with traditional faith communities but unaware that they are practicing a very different faith than historic orthodox Christianity.” 

While unwilling to speak into other major religions Smith and Denton do speak directly to Christian traditions by saying, 

We have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten step cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear… to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward. It is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith.

A robust Christian faith weakens not primarily because of secular forces, but because the faith’s adherents lack the vocabulary of their historic traditions and Biblical beliefs. A rich theological vocabulary pointing to the God of the Bible is supplanted by words of felt needs and subjective experience when churches do not intentionally engage the next generation with the faith detailed in the Bible. 

Smith and Denton note that for religious, and more specifically Christian, institutions “a major challenge for religious educators of youth, therefore, seems to be fostering articulation, helping teens practice talking about their faith, and providing practice at using vocabularies, grammars, stories, and key messages of faith.” They encourage religious communities to be more intentional in establishing programs and initiatives that harmonize with their own tradition and identities to solidify a more robust faith. What “vocabularies, grammars, stories, and key messages of faith” are at our disposal that help students obtain and sustain a strong Biblical faith to which they return over and over again as they grow in Christ? 

I previously wrote a brief intro to the Means of Grace, and here it might be helpful to look at improving baptism as a piece of our heritage and grammar to pass on. Honestly, have you ever mentioned to someone that they are to improve their baptism?

For some, baptism is a ritual participated in as a child, to others it was a momentary celebration of one’s conversion—a sacrament limited to the time in which it was administered. To improve one’s baptism does not mean we can make it any better, rather is to experience its meaning, and work out its implications in actual life. Let’s look at the Westminster Larger Catechism:

Q. 167: How is baptism to be improved by us?

A. The needful but much neglected duty of improving our baptism, is to be performed by us all our life long, especially in the time of temptation, and when we are present at the administration of it to others; by serious and thankful consideration of the nature of it, and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein; by being humbled for our sinful defilement, our falling short of, and walking contrary to, the grace of baptism, and our engagements; by growing up to assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that sacrament; by drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ, into whom we are baptized, for the mortifying of sin, and quickening of grace; and by endeavoring to live by faith, to have our conversation in holiness and righteousness, as those that have therein given up their names to Christ; and to walk in brotherly love, as being baptized by the same Spirit into one body.

We are to use times “when we are present at the administration of it [baptism] to others” to improve our baptism as well. It is very important for each member of the church to ruminate on the question of membership when a new convert joins the church and seeks baptism. When parents bring their children to be baptized they must answer a set of questions which gives ample opportunity for the members in the pew to reflect on their own faith in Christ.

The baptism of an infant also engages the entire Body of Christ and requires each present member to respond when asked, “Do you the members of this congregation undertake with these parents the covenant responsibility for the Christian nurture of this child?” In many churches the positive response is to stand in solidarity with the family as a member of the church agreeing to help raise the child to know Christ. By standing each believer is agreeing to tell that child the good news of Jesus Christ in some form or another, whether it be by relationship in the pew, a Sunday school teacher, a youth leader, or simply a general member of the congregation. This gives believers the time to reflect on their own baptism, seeing where they are in the Lord, and how they have moved in their life. Each baptism is an opportunity to improve one’s own, utilizing it for its appointed benefit, using it as a means of grace.

Improving our baptism helps us to grow in our assurance of salvation. Given that many are baptized as infants, it often feels that something is lacking since we participated in a passive manner, and cannot recall the event. This feeling comes about when we base it on our subjective experience—what we felt or experienced at the time we were baptized, or what we put in to it, as if we initiated the relationship leading to baptism. It is only when we realize that the sacrament is about what God has done can we rest in his completed work. Knowing that we were baptized, and knowing what Christ intended by giving us baptism, is therefore the main thing to be considered. As the Heidelberg Catechism Q.71 asks, “Where has Christ assured us that we are washed with His blood and Spirit as certainly as we are washed with the water of baptism? In the institution of baptism (Matt. 28:19).”

Improving one’s baptism does not mean being rebaptized if you think your infant baptism is deficient or you join a church that requires baptism as a public profession of faith. The WCF states, “the sacrament of baptism is but once to be administered to any person” (WCF, 28.7). Fisher Catechism explains that there is only one baptism “because when our ingrafting into Christ (which is the comprehensive benefit signified and sealed in baptism) once takes place, it is never repeated, but remains firm and inviolable forever.” Geoffrey Bromiley explains it well:

In view of the biblical significance of baptism, churches should not give, and their members should not expect or request, a repetition of baptism when some first or new experience of the work or gifts of the Holy Spirit is enjoyed. Instead, they should be taught more effectively the meaning of the baptism they have as a sign and seal of the saving work of God and thereby be led to see in any new experience the fulfillment of this work and of baptism as its sign. God is one, the covenant is one, and the work of God is one. So, too, baptism is one. There may be many experiences as we enter into God and his work, but there cannot be many baptisms, only a richer identification with that which baptism signifies.

 Understanding the lifelong pursuit of improving one’s baptism is just one way to engage the next generation in how they can grow in Christ using “vocabularies, grammars, stories, and key messages of faith”. This is a piece of our vocabulary and faith tradition that’s worthy of passing on so that MTD does not infect the church. To be able to follow the well-worn path of faith back to when God sealed one as his own possession, through the joys and pitfalls of life, is a special gift.