Todd,

One of the problems with asking a specific question about an autonomous movement is that one size does not fit all as it would in a confessional Reformed church.

However, that being said . . .

I served on staff in a Baptist church (150 attendance), pastored a Baptist church for a seven years (110 average attendance) and was senior pastor of another one for a decade (525 attendance) that accepted members in three ways . . .
a. Baptism upon a credible profession of faith.
b. Transfer of membership from another BAPTIST (any stripe) church.
c. Christian Experience

In the first one, one had to be baptized as a believer (therefore compelling a prospective member to repeat their infant baptism). In the last two, that was not necessary. In other words, a person who was a member of another Christian denomination (regardless of whether they were credo or paedo) could join our congregation on the basis of declaring that they had been baptized AND had been a member in good standing in a congregation of "like faith." In practice, this meant pretty much a green light for any evangelical coming from any evangelical denomination (including Presbyterian, Congregational, and Free Methodist where paedo baptism was practiced).

Does any of this make sense? No! Either you believe there is one valid candidate for baptism or you don't. My last churches simply wanted to be sure that a person had been baptized + had a credible confession of faith. Since church membership was taken to establish the second, the "irregularity" of the first was passed over.

Please understand, however, that outside of the SBC and many Reformed groups, denominationalism is not usually a big issue. Even in my "mainline" denomination of origin, here in So. Cal. less than 5% of the candidates for ordination were trained at a "Baptist" school. Most were either graduates of Fuller (and therefore mainly taught by Presbyterians of one stripe or another), Talbot (and thoroughly dispensational or progressive dispensational), or Bethel (SD). In my judicatory, we were more concerned with the "Evangelical" identity, not Baptist identity. If a person was an evangelical in conviction, had been baptized, and had a credible confession, they were OK regardless of their former church's practice on baptism.

Of the many anomalies inherent in this situation, try this one. If you are screening for an evangelical, then you are generally looking for agreement on the "fundamentals." In this respect, a conservative Presbyterian has more in common with an evangelical Baptist than the Baptist would with a fundamentalist Baptist! Yet, even the fundamentalist Baptist would share an ecclesiology quite close to the evangelical Baptist and they would both be pretty far in their sacramentology from the Presbyterian.

__________________
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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