A Mother's Thoughts On Transitioning From Being Baptist To Being Lutheran

This is a recent blog post from my wife. Maybe some of you have had to grapple with this as well.

The Girls' Baptism Birthday and ReflectionToday is the girls' second baptism birthday.  In the last year and a half my husband and I have been attending a Lutheran church.  This change has been a struggle for me in many ways because I grew up in a Baptist church.  Although my big turn around was realizing that, for the most part, the way I grew up and what I am learning now are two completely different points of view in many different ways.  Take baptism for example.  I grew up with the view point that you are baptized with full immersion after accepting the lord as your Savior, because it is what the Bible tells you to do.  It is a symbol of being buried in Christ and born again a new creation.  I also grew up with the point of view that baptizing infants was completely ridiculous because they cannot "repent and be baptized" as in Acts 2:38. Oh, and how dare they only sprinkle them!  When I married my hubby we would visit this topic about once a year for a week and then agree to disagree.  However, when we were pregnant with the girls, we had to actually make a decision on how to handle this for our household.  It took me a year of research and study to realize I couldn't find anything in the scriptures to say that baptizing my babies would send them to hell.... 

You can read the rest by clicking here. Enjoy more of Kim's posts at http://smalltowncrazylife.blogspot.com/

Jesus Juva,
Soli Deo Gloria

What If My Baptizer Was A Tool?

"If the pastor who baptized me turned out to be a hypocrite or a really bad person, should I consider getting baptized again? Would it invalidate my Baptism?"

     No. Baptism is valid because of God's Word of promise with the water, not because of the spiritual state of the person adminstering it. Since all people are indeed sinners, we always receive the blessings of God through weak and imperfect human beings. God's gifts are not less valid because of the instruments he uses; in fact, they often end up shining all the brighter (2 Corinthians 4:7). We do not, of course, approve of sin for this reason (see Romans 3:7-8, 6:1-2)! But we do rejoice that we can be certain of our Baptism, which would not be possible if its validity were dependent on the internal state of the person administering it.

     --Kelly Klages

     Water with the Word: A Baptism Q&A

Jesu Juva,
Soli Deo Gloria