Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas2007 
I understand the issues completely as I was once a Baptist minister, raised a Baptist, my grandfather was a Baptist minister, my sister married a Baptist minister.
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Thomas, I am still a Baptist minister and chair the committee that has examined the ordinands in our fellowship (at least the last 450 or so going back 26 years). I realize that most Baptists today tie the mode to the meaning (particularly in the SBC although generally so in most other Baptist bodies as well). My point was simply that
originally mode was secondary to meaning in the minds of the earliest Baptists.
It was not until the second/third generation of Baptists that the issue of mode arose. Since then,
most Baptists will only accept immersion as normative, although there ARE exceptions.
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The problem, of course, is that a Presbyterian Church would accept a properly administered immersion as being a valid baptism, where a Baptist Church would not accept a properly administered adult sprinkling or pouring as being a valid baptism. There the methodology is asserted as a priori necessity over the Trinitarian invocation.
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Again, generally true but not universally. One of the congregations I pastored (it ran about 500 per Sunday) insisted upon believer's baptism for anyone we baptized but accepted any mode for members who transferred from other evangelical churches. After 10 years it is difficult to remember if any of our members had been poured on, but several had been sprinkled. Of course we were not SBC which seems to take a firmer stand on the issue than practically any other Baptist body.
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Dennis E. McFadden, Ex Mainline Baptist (in Remission)
Atherton Baptist Homes, CEO
First Baptist Church of Alhambra, Member, Transformation Ministries (CA)
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