Baptism and Communion
Baptism in Water
Baptism is an essential first step for a believer who seeks to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. In taking it, he reveals that a coup has taken place in the secret recesses of his soul. The government of self has been toppled and overthrown. In its place, a new authority now reigns and rules. It is Christ, the living Lord!
We hold the act of baptism as a sacred, uncompromisable injunction of the Scriptures. Every believer, serious in his or her faith, will also be serious about baptism. It is the badge of our identity with Christ. In many ways, baptism is to Christianity what a ring is to marriage. A picture is indeed worth a thousand words and the picture portrayed in baptism declares a variety of scriptural truths:
- It proclaims Christ's death and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)
- It serves public notice to the world of one's new life in Christ (Matthew 10:32)
- It pictures a believer's death to sin and his resurrection to a spiritual life and lifestyle through the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 6:3-7, 10-11)
- It declares the joining of the believer into the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:13) and therefore into the life and mission of a local church
Our method of baptism is immersion. We feel strongly that this mode is the one presented in the New Testament for the following reasons:
- The Greek word for baptism means: "to submerge, plunge, drench, saturate, dip."(Arndt and Guingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, p. 131).
- Immersion followed the Jewish proselyte practice.
- The practice of the early church was immersion.
- The command of the Scriptures is "be baptized." By it, we both please the Lord and declare His reality in our lives and to the world.
Communion
The Lord's Supper is summed up in the command of Christ, "Do this in remembrance of Me." It is first and foremost a memorial of Christ and His redemptive death, and secondly an expression of our fellowship with one another. We believe the Lord's Supper is open to all who meet the prerequisites outlined in the Scripture... that one personally know Jesus Christ as Savior and that they have a cleansed life. We corporately share the Lord's Supper in the Sunday worship service approximately every two months and encourage its celebration in our Life Groups. Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24-25, Psalm 24:3-4, 1 Corinthians 11:17-34
