28 July 2023

Should Baptism Mean Church Membership?

by Loren Seibold | 28 July 2023 |

Many years ago I arrived in a new church district and began visiting my church members, including those (every church has them) whose names are listed but no one is quite sure who they are.

So I pull into the driveway of an ordinary but neat house, ring the bell. A retirement-aged woman answers. “Are you Wanda Schmidt?” “Yes.” “I’m Loren Seibold. I’m the new pastor here, and I’m visiting all of my church members.”

She looks puzzled. “New pastor? Church members?” “You’re a member of my church, according to our list,” I say. “I like to study the Bible,” she says, “but I’m not a member of a church. What church did you say you’re from?”

“The Seventh-day Adventist Church,” I say. She thinks for a bit. “About six years ago I went to some Bible meetings at the Memorial Hall,” she says. “The people who sponsored the meetings went to church on Saturday morning and wouldn’t eat pork chops.”

“That’s us!” I say, thinking I might be getting somewhere.

“Anyway, so after a couple of weeks in the meetings this charming man—he was the preacher, can’t remember his name—asked me if I wanted to be baptized. I think I’d been baptized as a baby because my parents were Lutherans, but I always wanted to be baptized like Jesus was. They had a portable tub-like thing there, and I wore a robe and they dipped me under the water. It was very nice. I’m glad I did it.”

She added, “But I don’t remember joining a church.”

Context

This was an era when there were some Adventist evangelists traveling the country who were, more or less, religious grifters. “Converts” were dunked and counted cavalierly, because conference leaders demanded not healthy churches, but baptism numbers.

Some evangelists put on big, high-pressure shows in those days. They baptized anyone they could pull in, including every marginally eligible church child. Their success was announced by a brag article in the union paper with a snapshot of new converts.

When someone was baptized, he or she would automatically become a church member. Lots of them didn’t stay, but that didn’t matter to the evangelist. He moved on. He could say, “I baptized them, you couldn’t keep them. Not my problem.”

Baptized like Jesus

Here’s what I really want to talk about, though.

It occurred to me that Wanda had gotten exactly that she wanted, and it was something precious to her: she’d been baptized like Jesus had been, by immersion. It had made her feel closer to Jesus. She cherished her baptism.

So was this a failure? As far as the congregation was concerned, yes. But for her it had been a blessing.

So my question: must a baptism always result in a church member? Isn’t it enough just to be baptized?

Adding to the number

When I asked an evangelist acquaintance this question, he referenced the believers’ experience right after Pentecost, in Acts 2:41:

Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

Adding to the number, he argued, meant it wasn’t just a spiritual experience. It was proof that they were now counted and recorded as official church members.

Now, biblically, Christians are supposed to be a community. I get that. We are to worship together and encourage one another.

But Acts says nothing about a church clerk writing down their names; no vote to bring them into church membership; no doctrinal list they had to sign their names to; no offering envelopes; no union magazine to send them; no frowns the first time they walk into church with earrings on, or a casserole with hamburger in it.

The add-to-the-number evangelists call it “soul-winning,” but it is actually conducted more like sales—not unlike selling double-glazed windows. They refer to people as “interests,” and when they make their reports to their peers it’s pretty clear what they’re measuring. I’m not saying they’re uncaring, unspiritual people, but in the matter of evangelism, they want numbers.

Back in my younger years as a pastor, adding to the numbers was an obsession. Baptisms and tithe dominated every workers’ meeting. They set goals for us. We had to run a certain number of meetings every year. We had to get a specified number of baptisms. The conference president would publicly scold those who hadn’t reached their numbers.

I was once told by a president that I “might as well be dead and buried” because my little rural district hadn’t added enough new members. How’s that for encouragement? (It’s still like that in some parts of the developing world. One overseas pastor told me the pressure was so intense one month that he copied names from cemetery gravestones and turned them in—otherwise they wouldn’t give him his paycheck.)

I’ve read through the gospels multiple times, and I can’t come up with a picture of Jesus’ kingdom of heaven that looks anything like the baptism-for-numbers I was browbeaten into as an apprentice pastor.

Mere baptism?

It’s pretty clear that the people in Acts didn’t have the church machinery we do now—the kind that sometimes promotes church organization at the expense of the good news.

But they did have impressive fellowship.

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. (Acts 4).

Fellowship, interestingly, didn’t seem to be the reason for John the Baptist’s evangelism: Matthew and Mark say nothing about people joining the “Johnites” and going to church each week out in the desert. There was no list, no church building, no offering plates. Just a preacher and a river.

There was spiritual meaning to John’s baptism, though. Mark says that John preached “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” which suggests that people trekked out to the wilderness to offload life-destroying guilt. These were people who had hurt others, committed adultery, may even have killed someone. Presumably, they went home with their burdens lifted

When Jesus’ disciples baptized people, I suspect it was along the model of John’s. Some became Jesus’ followers. We know thousands gathered to listen to Jesus preach. But if it had evolved into a church, it wasn’t a durable one: it was moribund by the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection when almost no one would admit to being a follower of Jesus of Galilee.

Paul was the hinge between Jesus’ ministry and organized religion. He established churches all over the place, and if you read his letters you’ll see that the moment the converts to Jesus became an organized church, that’s when the problems started.

Magic ritual

John the Baptist notwithstanding, I don’t think a pastor should raise false hopes about baptism. Do talk about forgiveness of sin, salvation, and Jesus; don’t imply that baptism guarantees a magic u-turn in the person’s life.

I once had an unusually hard-nosed member demand that I baptize his teen daughter. Yes, that’s how he put it. When I asked him if she wanted to be baptized, he said yes, he’d talked her into it.

It had to be very soon. I can’t remember why. Maybe he was afraid she’d change her mind.

I already knew that the trajectory for this young woman’s life wasn’t in a spiritual direction. But her father was stubborn and insistent. The girl told me that yes, she wanted to be baptized, though she might just have been trying to please her spiritually abusive father.

Anyway, I baptized her.

I don’t think she ever came back to church. Her life after that wasn’t a great success in the ways we’d evaluate success. But knowing the angry “gospel” that had been modeled for her, I think she turned out about as well as could be expected.

I believe that God’s grandest, most generous grace is reserved for people whose lives were damaged by bad religion.

Evangelists, again

If there’s any positive spin I can put on the add-to-the-number evangelists, it’s that they, like this father, tell themselves that baptism magically fixes people. But they don’t stick around to see if it does. Often it doesn’t.

To answer the question:

So is it okay to baptize someone without making them a church member?

I’ve done it. I think I’d do it again were I still a pastor.

There are some things I’d want to feel comfortable about, though.

I’d want to know that the baptizee found it a meaningful event—that he or she had at least a basic appreciation for what was happening to them. I wouldn’t want it done on a lark, or reluctantly, or under pressure. I hope they remember it as a lovely event that brought them closer to Jesus.

I’d want them to think of baptism as a way to affirm a decision they’ve already made, not as a means to change life direction instantly; I fear they’d be disappointed. (Though who am I to say that God never completely changes someone’s life through a quick dip in the magic hot tub? I’ve not seen it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.)

I’d hope that they had a community that they were part of, though my feelings about that have moderated after years as a pastor. I had some lovely people in my congregations, but I also learned that not all Adventist congregations can be trusted with new believers. Established congregations rarely know how to welcome new converts into their fellowship. The members call it “going out the back door” but that’s nonsense: the new people walk right out the front door, and we don’t stop them. That’s because we like the idea of new members more than we like new members; they may not fit into our comfortable little group.

Back to Wanda

I asked Wanda, “Would you like to be part of our church?” “No,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed visiting with you, but I have no desire to come to church.” “That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll let our church secretary know that we made a mistake in our record-keeping. But I’m glad you got to be baptized.” “Me, too,” she said. “Would it be OK if I stopped in from time to time to see you?” I asked. “I’d like that,” she said.

So I dropped off a Signs magazine occasionally, brought her some flowers from my garden, and prayed with her. She never showed any interest in coming to church. I was a chaplain visiting someone lonely.

I have no way of knowing, of course, but I hope that that was appreciated in heaven as much as adding another member to the church books.

Loren Seibold is the executive editor of Adventist Today.