Dever on the danger of ‘tolerated non-involvement’

[Greg Long]

Kevin Miller wrote:

dgszweda wrote:

What says a 5 year old was saved? The prayer? the fact that they feel good? The fact that they want to attend church because of their buddies and they like their teacher Mrs. Smith because she lets them color cool pictures during SS?

Couldn’t the same questions be asked of an adult, too? What says an adult is saved? Is it because they are attending church because they like the music or the preaching style of the pastor? Is it because they move out of their living arrangement because they feel they HAVE TO in order to prove their sincerity?

Kevin, wouldn’t you agree that there are significant differences between the ability of an adult to understand and articulate their confession of faith and that of a child? Multiple Scripture passages confirm this.

I am amazed at the lack of interaction with the fact that the apostles were present at the baptism of the sorcerer (Simon), who after the baptism still wanted to be a sorcerer. Also, you have the 3,000 who professed faith and were baptized at Pentecost.

There you have examples in Acts that discard much of what is presented. What some of you are calling wisdom is just more manmade wisdom, which is not true wisdom. It is folly to think we can better guard the church than what Christ has said. He is Lord of the church. It isn’t the duty of elders to create policy, but to lead through obedience to the policies already laid down.

[Kevin Miller]

Greg Long wrote:

Kevin Miller wrote:

dgszweda wrote:

What says a 5 year old was saved? The prayer? the fact that they feel good? The fact that they want to attend church because of their buddies and they like their teacher Mrs. Smith because she lets them color cool pictures during SS?

Couldn’t the same questions be asked of an adult, too? What says an adult is saved? Is it because they are attending church because they like the music or the preaching style of the pastor? Is it because they move out of their living arrangement because they feel they HAVE TO in order to prove their sincerity?

Kevin, wouldn’t you agree that there are significant differences between the ability of an adult to understand and articulate their confession of faith and that of a child? Multiple Scripture passages confirm this.

Just how detailed of a confession of faith does a person need to articulate to be baptized? In Matthew 18:3, Jesus said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Do we then really need to say that a child needs to understand and articulate like an adult in order to be baptized? There are a lot of adults who get saved with little prior spiritual background who would have just as much difficulty articulating a statement of faith as what a child would have.

The web is getting more tangled. Better to opt for freedom and truth.

[Greg Long]

I can assure you that my arguments are biblically and theologically based. You may not agree with me, and I might even be wrong, but to simply dismiss them as not being biblically or theologically based because you disagree with them does nothing to advance the conversation.

To be biblical, you will need to actually interact with the scriptural revelation. Neither you, nor the elders at CHBC have done that. You are just making statements that circle the scripture. Your position, and theirs, is a reaction against the idea that a child may not fully understand. Fear is a bad motivation for baptism policy.

I would be interested in your comments regarding Simon and Pentecost. So far, no one has interacted with those two issues who favor Dever’s view.

I read Dever’s book The Deliberate Church where he advocated that. I really disagree for a couple of reasons:

• We are too small and don’t have the staff to hold a “membership class.” He appears to have tunnel-vision on a large church environment. What this looks like in my context is meeting over coffee a few times in the diner on the square. Even then, I’m not really “holding a class.” I’m just making sure the person (1) is saved, (2) is baptized by immersion, (3) understands what the purpose of church membership is and isn’t and (4) wants to join the church for the right reasons
• I don’t think the process of church membership needs to be as hard as Dever wants it to be. I really understand his reasons - I just think true believers ought to be welcomed into the church, and then discipled. I’m not at church, but I think I recall Dever saying that his membership class runs for six months? If I am remembering correctly, this is ridiculous. I hope he throws in a gift certificate when they graduate, as sort of a church membership present!

I’m a newer Pastor, so I don’t have the experience some of you have on this issue. I may change my mind as I make mistakes over the years. This is my thinking on the issue as it stands now.

Dever’s reason for delaying baptism and church membership in younger folks:

• Stop baptizing and admitting children into formal church membership. Dever said the question is not whether a 5-year-old or 10-year-old “can savingly confess Christ.” “Of course they can,” he said. The question for the church is whether its members have the capacity to make an informed, lifelong commitment to follow Christ. “The large number of nominal Christians and rebaptisms in Southern Baptist churches seem to answer that we have gotten something badly wrong in the 20th century,” he said.

This really is an issue of Lordship. The old dividing line raises it’s ugly head again:

• Does salvation entail an intelligent and knowing commitment to the Lordship of Christ?
• Or, will Lordship inevitably follow gradually after salvation, as fruit of genuine conversion?

Dever appears to want to restrict baptism and membership because of the Lordship issue. He sees Lordship as a condition of the Gospel, rather than the mark or fruit of genuine conversion.

[TylerR]

I read Dever’s book The Deliberate Church where he advocated that. I really disagree for a couple of reasons:

• We are too small and don’t have the staff to hold a “membership class.” He appears to have tunnel-vision on a large church environment. What this looks like in my context is meeting over coffee a few times in the diner on the square. Even then, I’m not really “holding a class.” I’m just making sure the person (1) is saved, (2) is baptized by immersion, (3) understands what the purpose of church membership is and isn’t and (4) wants to join the church for the right reasons
• I don’t think the process of church membership needs to be as hard as Dever wants it to be. I really understand his reasons - I just think true believers ought to be welcomed into the church, and then discipled. I’m not at church, but I think I recall Dever saying that his membership class runs for six months? If I am remembering correctly, this is ridiculous. I hope he throws in a gift certificate when they graduate, as sort of a church membership present!

I’m a newer Pastor, so I don’t have the experience some of you have on this issue. I may change my mind as I make mistakes over the years. This is my thinking on the issue as it stands now.

I think you might change your mind over time; I did. It avoids a number of potential flare-ups and possible division down the line. It also gives you, the pastor, a chance to develop personal relationships with new members from the get-go. I also come from a small church background. If you do not have someone who can teach adult SS so you can conduct a new members class, do it on Wednesday night while someone leads everyone else in prayer meeting or on another evening. It doesn’t have to be 6 months, but I have learned from experience that a couple cups of coffee are inadequate. You can contact someone you respect to see if they have something prepared you might be able to use. The church I am currently attending has a notebook prepared for people to keep on the shelf after they finish the class. Some men I have known simply go through the church constitution, paying special attention to the doctrinal statement.

I’ll look at his book tomorrow and let you know what it said. I swear it wasn’t six hours. It may have been six weeks … who knows! I’m sure the class you were at was six hours, but I just don’t remember the book saying that.

[TylerR]

I’ll look at his book tomorrow and let you know what it said. I swear it wasn’t six hours. It may have been six weeks … who knows! I’m sure the class you were at was six hours, but I just don’t remember the book saying that.

Tyler, I also attend a small church, and our new membership class is about 6 weeks. (As an aside, I’m not a pastor, but I am currently serving as a deacon.) It’s really imperative that prospective members understand the purpose of a church, why and how it works the way it does, and that they are not surprised by the contents of the doctrinal statement and covenant. I.e., we want people to understand that this is not a club they are joining, but a body with both privileges and responsibilities, and that they understand that people will be watching out for them spiritually as they should be for others. I agree with those who say that a couple cups of coffee is not enough time to cover all this in a fashion that befits the seriousness of what they are doing when they join a church.

That’s one of the reasons I found the 9Marks conference on Church Membership so helpful this year. I’m not sure I agree with the position of delaying baptism (though as young as they are sometimes getting these days, they might as well be infant baptism, a point that was brought up at the conference during questions about baptism), but I understand the reasons for that as well. You can’t expect a child to understand everything perfectly even if they have a very good understanding of salvation, but you certainly want to be careful not to give false assurance — and an early baptism can certainly contribute to that. But as for membership, as you do in your church, there can certainly be a two-tiered system so that full voting privileges are not permitted until the member is an adult and can make adult decisions. Also, in most cases (though not all), a child is joining as part of a family, and not coming to the church without his or her parents, so the distinction can be easily made. I don’t see any biblical reason to withhold baptism from anyone who understands what they are doing and truly displays a changed heart, but there are reasons the bible mentions that church leaders should not be novices. For the same reasons, we should be very careful with children with both baptism and membership. As James pointed out, we can’t prevent Simons from being baptized and joining, anyone can deceive, but we should certainly not be helping them deceive themselves.

But back to the class, even children can be presented material that is at their level that helps them understand the seriousness of joining together with God’s people. I don’t think this should be glossed over — the fruit of doing so has been many members who “grow up in church” and become adult members without having any real connection to the church body, other than the fact they just go there, and that in many cases have never had to agree to the doctrinal statement or covenant. Even if they are nominal Christians, it’s next worst thing to having unregenerate members.

Churches in which members are only required to attend, give, and obey the pastor do not need classes to be taught the meaning of their church membership.

[TylerR]

I’ll look at his book tomorrow and let you know what it said. I swear it wasn’t six hours. It may have been six weeks … who knows! I’m sure the class you were at was six hours, but I just don’t remember the book saying that.

I personally have been through the class, taught by Dever. They offer it in two forms: all at once in six hours on a Saturday or each week during Sunday school. The Sunday school arrangement is pretty cool as it starts out in the main auditorium early where each teacher of a class (Family Issues, Church History, New Members etc.) briefly pop up and tell newcomers what their class is about and what they’ll be talking about that morning. The classes get underway. So all a believer would have to do is go to Sunday school for a few weeks and get a crash course in what it means to live the Christian life before they commit and become members of a local church. Remember that the believers at Capitol Hill may have been saved just a few weeks before in a culture where committing to a local body of believers is like landing on Mars sometimes. Hopefully it’s like that at all our churches.
Most churches under 100 people would be better off doing a class of about 3-4 hours on a Sunday afternoon quarterly. I just attended such a class with a pastor trying to do the CHBC model and it went really well.