What Is a Reformed Baptist? Beliefs, History & Key Leaders to Know

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“The first congregation of Reformed Baptists (then called Particular Baptists) assembled in London by 1638. The movement was born out of the separatist movement of the English Reformation.” - Word by Word

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dgszweda
Thu, 04/11/24 1:11 am

Having been in this sphere the article was mostly correct. Here are a couple of my thoughts:

  • Confessional is one of the key defining attributes and to be a member you would need to susbscribe to the faith. But what you will often see is that the elders will subscribe to something like the LBC of faith, whereas members may be required to subscribe to something less Reformed like the New Hampshire Confession of Faith.
  • Perpetuity of the moral law is sometimes held differently. Some congregations will eschew all forms of crosses in their church, while others maybe more lenient, not holding to it as a form of idolatry.
  • Regulative principle of worship. There is a whole string of reformed baptist who decry any instrument being in a church service, while others may have something like a guitar. They would all hold to a regulative principle, but practice varies.
  • Church membership - many reformed baptist churches will not allow children under 16-18 to be members of the church, and younger kids prevented from baptism, until the heart can be known.
  • Congregational - This is not always true. There are reformed baptist churches that lean significantly more toward elder ruled, vs. elder led. For example, some reformed baptist churches, the elders choose the elders and the congregation affirms who the elders chose. Whereas other reformed baptist churches will have the congregation choose from among them men qualified to be elders, and the current elders will meet with them before they are brought before a vote.
  • Most are not very evangelistic. They struggle with developing a missions model. They view the purpose of the church is the minister to the redeemed. This has also been one of the critiques of the LBC, on whether it is not sufficiently missional.
  • One of the other things that the author misses is that most are liturgical. There is a very formal defined process for the church service, with various Scriptures and prayers throughout that have a purpose (such as "Prayer of Adoration" or "Prayer of Supplication")