I baptize people on their profession of 
faith and desire to be baptized.  If 
they understand the Gospel and have made 
a personal commitment of faith, 
confessing Christ as Savior,  I baptize 
them.  I do talk with them at length 
about their salvation and the meaning of 
biblical baptism, of course.    I make 
no guarantees of their salvation, nor 
could I.  When I do the dunking, I say 
something like "On your profession of 
faith I baptize you...."
Even if we would require a 3 month Bible 
study course or watching their life for 
2 years, I still could not guarantee 
their salvation.

As far as your daughter, Kevin, thank 
God for her testimony.  As your pastor, 
I would look to you and your wife for 
counsel.  You live with her and know her 
best.  I may encourage her to wait until 
she was a little older so she would 
remember it more clearly and understand 
it better, but the danger of that advice 
is that it may convey to her that 
baptism isn't all that important and 
obedience to Christ's commands can be 
put off.

Jimbo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin Sigafoos" 
<ksigafoos@...>
To: <pastorsforum@...>
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 12:18 PM
Subject: Re: [PastorsForum] Father and 
son


On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 11:41 AM, Jerry 
Krewson
<pastorjerry@...> wrote:
> Kevin,
> In regards to your statement:::"What 
> responsibility do we, as men of God,
> have to prevent false
> conversions..." I ask, Can we know, 
> ever know, if someone has "false
> conversions?"
>
> It seems to me that for you Calvinist, 
> all conversions have to be suspect.
> It is either, "once saved...," or 
> "well, he was never saved in the first
> place."
>

As I tried to make very clear, it has 
NOTHING to do with Calvinism or
the Perseverance of the Saints.  I think 
we all, whether you are
reformed or not, have an obligation to 
not mislead someone into a
false sense of security.  (BTW, I 
thought that you believed in OSAS as
well?)

Actually, I have a far more personal 
reason for asking the question.
My daughter, Tera, is 7 years old.  She 
is being raised in a Christian
home.  She has always gone to church, 
Sunday School, and AWANA.  We
have family devotions every night. 
She's a really good kid, a sweet
girl who likes to please her mommy and 
daddy.  She knows the Gospel
and has confessed Christ as her savior. 
She is memorizing Scripture.
She shows remorse over sin and evidence 
of the Spirit's work in her
life.

Tera has been asking me for over two 
years if she can be baptized.  I
spoke to our elders about it and they 
requested that she attend a 6
week Bible study with them so that they 
could get an assessment of the
legitimacy of her faith.  A couple of 
weeks ago, the elders spoke to
me about Tera.  They said all that I 
wrote above and said that they
think that her faith is genuine. 
However, they weren't ready to
present her before the body as a 
candidate for baptism because they
wanted to see her faith tested a bit.

I questioned them about this.  My prayer 
is that all of my children
would received salvation at a young age 
and that they would be spared
the pain of repenting after a long life 
of sin.  I know that I still
carry some of the scars of my former 
life before Christ saved me and
my hope is that He will spare them this 
pain.  I also believe that if
it is the Spirit that is prompting Tera 
to desire baptism that it
would be sin for me or the elders to 
stand it His way.  OTOH, I
certainly believe that her baptism would 
be meaningless if she isn't
truly saved and I want to avoid giving 
her a false sense of security.
Waiting a year or two wouldn't be too 
bad and it might be more
memorable for her.

It seems to me that the elders do not 
have a realistic understanding
of what the faith of a 7 year old should 
be.  Our church is 90%
seminary families.  Shelly and I are the 
odd ducks in that we have
older children.  Our nursery is booming 
but most of the children are
under 10.  The two elders who spoke to 
me do not have children over 5.
 I think that they are so used to 
dealing with adults that they may
not have a firm grasp on the faith of a 
child.

However, my greatest concern right now 
is that Tera will be
discouraged when I tell her what the 
elders said.  I'm concerned that
she will feel like she didn't "pass the 
test"; that she said something
wrong or that she isn't "good enough" to 
be baptized.

I said all of this so that you can see 
that my questions are
legitimate and sincere.  How will you 
know that this man's faith is
genuine?  How will you know if the boy's 
faith is genuine?  Will you
wait for their faith to be tested?  Do 
you feel an obligation to
verify their confession before 
presenting them before the church for
baptism?


-- 

Grace and peace,
Kevin Sigafoos
---------------------
For from him and through him and to him 
are all things. To him be
glory forever. Amen. (Rom 11:36)

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