B.A.P.T.I.S.T. – Discovering our Distinctiveness
Rediscovering The Baptist in The Baptist Church of Beaufort

An Open Letter to our NonBaptist Guests

Dear John and Jane Guest –
I have really enjoyed our conversations about your interest in joining the Christian community we call The Baptist Church of Beaufort. I see God working in your lives and I’m excited about the opportunities for spiritual growth and mission service God has provided for you here at the church. At the same time, I understand your many questions about what it means to be Baptist. Coming from a church with a different denominational tradition creates questions about baptism and church governance, Jane. John – since this will be your first church experience since accepting Jesus as your Savior – you seemed to be still getting over some of your own preconceptions of being a Baptist as well. To help answer all of your questions, let me share with you a few of our Baptist distinctives. These are some things that most Baptist churches will have in common, but I’ll try to help you understand The Baptist Church of Beaufort’s uniqueness as well.
As Baptists, the wonderful people known as The Baptist Church of Beaufort have a long history of seeking to be an authentic, Bible directed body of Jesus followers. This is one of the first things we all need to know about what it means to be Baptist – each church is a unique body of followers. Because of the age of our church, we trace our history over 350 years to within 50 years of the fist Baptist church in Amsterdam. This history shows the depth of the people of faith in this place, but it doesn’t define us as followers of Jesus.
Each person carries a different Baptist story – why choose to be a Baptist. My Baptist story began in the home of a Baptist pastor. Throughout his life, my dad mainly pastored rural Baptist churches. In these churches I learned about baptism. I was immersed when I was 8 years old – I still remember swimming out of the baptistry pool. In these churches, I experienced missions by going to the local nursing home – we would bring fruit every time we visited. I learned about the uniqueness of each church as I went off to college and experienced a much different Baptist church than my home church – but it was still Baptist.
Thesis: Being a Baptist Christian empowers us to passionately follow Jesus as we are shaped through our interaction with God’s Word, the Bible, in order that God will use us in the redemption of God’s world.
Let me see if I can help you understand and remember the way of faith we call Baptist through an acrostic of BAPTIST. This will highlight some of the major distinctions of all Baptist churches, but especially BCOB.
B –Bible as Sole Authority
1. To help you understand this distinctive listen to 2 Timothy 3:16-17. The writer is a man by the name of Paul – a great writer, church planter, and evangelist in the years after Jesus left for heaven. Here is what he says about the scripture: Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us. 2 Timothy 3:16 (Message)
2. Since the beginning of Baptist churches, we have always looked to the Bible to show us God’s truth for our lives, to expose our sin so that we can follow God better, and to help us mold our lives after Jesus. The Bible is our authority – it is God’s living word which shapes us as individuals and as a church. This is what I meant about history being important, but not everything. The Bible is what we base our lives and our church on.
3. We believe that God breathed into the words of living men who wrote these words. God’s breath gives them life – even today. God didn’t write these words on a stone and give them to humans, instead God used sinful people just like us to create documents which carry truth and life and power.
4. The Baptist Church of Beaufort has always had a high respect for the authority of God’s Word in our life. We trust God’s Word with our lives. We read the Bible in our worship. We encourage everyone to be a part of a Bible study – the more we are engaged in the God’s Word the more we are growing in our spiritual walk.
5. Most importantly, we trust the Bible to show us Jesus. It is Jesus, revealed in the Bible, who brings us salvation, hope, love and purpose for life.
6. For me, as a pastor, I trust God to use the words of scripture to change us each week in worship. God lives in these words. My task as preacher and pastor is helping us to encounter God’s Living Spirit in the Bible so that God will form us more into Jesus each week.

A – Autonomy of the Local church
1. Autonomy is a big word for me – but it fits great as the A in Baptist. It simply means: self governing. Look at this passage from Acts 13:1-3: While they [The church leaders in Antioch] were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."
2. After Jesus went back to Heaven, the followers of Jesus began to congregate. The first ones gathered in Jerusalem. Soon, some Jewish believers began to leave Jerusalem because it was getting hot – Jesus followers were being arrested and killed. Many of these first waves of believers settled in another town called Antioch. In this great Roman city, the Jewish followers of Jesus began to tell other people who were not Jewish about Jesus and they accepted Jesus too. They created their own church. There were still connected with the church in Jerusalem, but they were still independent. This scripture of Acts shows this early church sending out their own missionaries – Barnabas and Saul.
3. All Baptist churches operate in this same way – each church is independent – self governing. The BCOB is its own body of faith – we answer only to ourselves, our understanding of scripture and God’s working in our lives. Our church owns this property. Our church calls our own pastor and staff. This is probably different, Jane, than the church you are coming from which had bishops and councils.
4. Like the church in Antioch, we still choose to partner and connect to other churches and organizations to help us do more together than we can apart.
5. Our Baptist autonomy, though, is what accounts for the great diversity in our Baptist family. As you said, John – I always thought Baptist churches would be different than what I experienced at BCOB. It’s autonomy that makes each congregation unique and special.

P – Priesthood of the Believer
1. Like most of these ideas – the Priesthood of the Believer is not unique to Baptists. It’s just when we combine all of these distinctions together that we get a good picture of Baptist. To understand this concept look at Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. I Peter 2:9 (NASB)
2. The Priesthood of the Believers has a dual purpose. First - we each are accountable to God for our beliefs and actions. As Baptists we believe in freedom and trust. We have no priests to intercede to God on your behalf. Each of us is responsible to God – to confess our sins, to listen to God’s Spirit through God’s Word. This leads to the 2nd purpose: we are each called to be God’s minister/missionary in our world. Peter says, when we accept Jesus as our savior we become part of the “chosen race,” we are a royal “priesthood.” While this church has called me to serve as the interim pastor, God has called each us to serve as minister where you live and work.
3. At BCOB we are still learning how to embrace this concept for all its worth. We attempt to empower each individual to experience God’s love, to follow Jesus and to use God’s spiritual gifts in service in the church and world. We are not experiencing the truth blessings of God’s Way of Life when we simply sit on the pew Sunday after Sunday. God calls us into the world as missionaries.
T – Two Ordinances (Lord’s Supper and Baptism)
1. T and I are closely related. T shows us that we have 2 specific ways that we intentionally remember Jesus’ sacrifice in our life. These two things are: the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. I Corinthians 11:23: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me I Corinthians 11:24 (KJV)
2. All Christian faith groups celebrate these two scriptural events in some way. For Baptists – these events are symbols or reminders.
1. The Lord’s Supper – or Communion – is a reminder of the last meal Jesus has with his disciples before he was crucified. At that supper he told his disciples to celebrate the meal “in remembrance of him.” Jane – I know this will be different for you. Religious wars through the centuries have broken out about the meaning of these different elements. Baptists over the years have used this meal to remind each of us in worship of the sacrifice Jesus made to save us.
2. At The Baptist Church of Beaufort we celebrate the Lord’s Supper about once a quarter. Each worship service will do it differently so I hope you experience both.
3. Baptism is the 2nd Ordinance or reminder and it represents the next letter I in Baptist
I – Immersion
1. We see the importance of baptism from the last words of Jesus in Matthew 28:19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28:19 (HCSB)
2. Baptism is another concept that Jesus followers have divided over the years. It’s also one of the main early distinctives of what it meant to be Baptist. The first Baptists believed that baptism was not for infants – it was for people who believed in Jesus and choose to follow him. Soon, these early Baptists also began to believe that baptism needed to be by immersion – we needed to get all the way wet. The Baptists were at first known as “dippers” and soon that led to another derisive term – “Baptist”
3. Once again, like communion - baptism is not something that saves you – it is a reminder and a testimony for the inner transformation Jesus has done in our lives as we have said “yes” to God’s salvation.
4. The method of immersion comes from the Greek word “baptizo.” Literally it means “immersion.” In these early years of the 1600’s God’s Word was just beginning to be translated into English. The early translators didn’t want to challenge the method of baptism so they transliterated the Greek word and created a new English word “baptism.”
5. I look forward to celebrating baptism with both of you – Jane and John. The joy of believer’s baptism especially for adults is priceless. There is a spiritual experience of remembering the death and resurrection of Jesus through the physicalness of going underwater – a physical symbol of what we have experienced with Jesus.
6. We become a Christian through accepting Jesus and following him with our life – our baptism simply becomes our birth announcement.
S – Soul Competency/Security of the Believer
1. This is another big idea – but look at Galatians 5:1: For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
2. Like priesthood of the believer - We stand before God on our own, but we stand connected to our community of faith. Baptists have always believed in freedom. We have fought for freedom of religion. This idea of soul competency –each of us has the freedom to choose to follow Jesus or not. Our parents and the church cannot make our decisions for us. We must come to a place in our life where we decide we will follow Jesus. John – this is what you have just done.
3. We can be secure in this freedom and this choice. This idea has been called Security of the Believer. When God saves us, God will not let us go. We will sin, we will walk away from God, but God will not walk about from us. Our lives do not have to be spent in fear that we will make the wrong choice one day and lose what God has done for us.
T – Testimony
1. The final letter doesn’t mean this is the last or least important part of being Baptist – it just fits the acrostic well. Look at I Peter 3:1: But set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts and always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks about the hope you possess
2. As Baptists we believe God expects each of us – no matter our age or years of faith - to play a part in God’s redemptive action in the world.
3. God expects each of us to be evangelists. We don’t have to be Billy Graham, but we expect all believers to show and tell people about the love and grace we have experienced through Jesus.
4. At BCOB we call this idea: missional. God is calling us to live our lives for God’s purpose of redemption. If you hang around here long enough you’ll hear me say that we are all missionaries in our community and world.
5. At BCOB – we are establishing mission points around the world – like that early church in Antioch – so that each of us can play a part in this process.

Conclusion –
Jane and John – I hope the next time you see Baptist written somewhere you’ll think more about what that means. I really appreciate you for allowing me to share this with you. I look forward to our continued conversations about being a part of this church – even more importantly, I look forward to seeing how God will use you to grow and impact your community.
I have seen God do amazing things in people’s life through this church as we have followed Jesus together. I know that this church is in an interim period, but I also know that some of the best years of ministry are still ahead of us. God needs BCOB at this time to minister in this place. I hope that you will see the challenge and the opportunities that lay a hand and join us on this great journey of faith.
Your friend and pastor, Pastor Eric