Please contact this church for your research: http://www.thecrossingschurch.com/

That’s a plant out of the Greater Alton Church of Christ in Missouri, and their views are becoming more and more influential. They emphasize making disciples, and baptism is simply a part of that - not an end in itself.

Its also interesting that they’re baptizing more people than probably any other church in Missouri, and not only that - they’re retaining them.

Check it out.

How did anyone get the idea that we make disciples by baptising? Did Jesus not say “make disciples” baptising them?

It was Peter who spoke those words recorded by Dr Luke in Acts 2:38. What is the logic of making baptism more important than “repent”? I doubt that many honest people will deny that we have given more weight to baptism than is just.

Luke continued to quote Peter who when he defended his ministry to the Gentiles to the brothers at Judea he said “If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us WHEN WE BELIEVED on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” (Acts 11:17, caps my emphasis). Peter’s statement here is largely ignored my all the coC teachers and preachers I have listened to. Why? Because Peter confirms here what the rest of the Bible clearly teaches, salvation is by faith in Christ alone and solely upon His merit.

If we are not careful we will repeat the error of Catholics who put church tradition on the same level of authority as Holy Writ, God forbid.

Only Christ deserves our whole trust, our complete surrender, and humble devotion. Man says “do”, God says “done”.

His peace,
Royce

First of all I have no agenda. My mistake, I have been doing this research for over 10 years. Again my typographical mistake 10 instead of 6 for those who are more concerned with specifics rather than ideas, just like the lady who corrected my spelling in an earlier comment. I travel extensively as a consultant and full time employee so whenever I am in a new town I try to visit the area cofC’s. You can also call them on the phone you know there is a phone directory in Mac Lynn’s’ book the churches of Christ in the USA 2006 edition. I have done phone interviews and personal interviews with members as logistics allowed. Remember I have been traveling the USA with my Dad (the cofC fund raiser) visiting congregations since I can remember.

Why would you take issue with Mike’s so called ambiguous idea? Obviously many of us long time members of the cofC have had similar ideas, so it is not just Mike. Does Mike have a responsibility to control everyone else’s thinking? One of the things that I love about the cofC was the teaching that we can think for ourselves “no one is between you and God”, the “priest hood of all believers”, “read the Bible for yourself”. Now it seems that this teaching is back firing on us. Now whenever someone thinks for themselves and comes to different conclusions than are the norm; they are spoken to or dealt with the way that you have with myself and Mike in your comment. Do you know that I do not suggest that we do away with believer’s baptism? I suggest that we put less pressure on children to be baptized and focus more efforts at creating real authentic faith in non-pressure, open inquisitive environments answering the honest doubt at the bottom of their hearts. I have long since had issue with the age of accountability idea in regards to baptism for many reasons. I believe that we should focus more efforts in engaging the current post modern spiritual seeker in faith conversations that focus on helping answer their questions of faith and honest doubt not our questions or trying to lead them through some five steps of salvation. If this is an agenda then maybe it is wrong to think for one self and do research and understand and make suggestions. Do you know this one of the main reasons that people especially those 18-30 have left the cofC for other Christian churches in the last 10 years; anytime they thought for themselves and came up with different answers than had traditionally been accepted and practiced they were told that was wrong and heaven forbid what you told me “Go somewhere else”. Dan on this same post “Troubled Waters” told us all “Those that want to update the cofC to save the trouble and go to the Baptist church.” Well if we wanted to be at the Baptist church don’t think that is where we would be? But we are not, we are here so get used to people thinking for themselves it is only going to be increase. So be careful who you and Dan and anyone else tell to go to the Baptist church, or somewhere else you may just get your wish and then you all will only be with people who think just like each other. Is that what you want? I would think that the beauty of blogs like this is to share ideas and experiences, and make suggestions. I would respectfully ask; please let this continue.

Joe, I was born at night, but not last night. You expect me to believe that a thirty-one-year-old ‘highly successful engineer’ has time to visit 1000 congregations in six years (that’s three-a-week every week), has personally visited with the ‘leaders’ of 7800 of the 9800 congregations, and has spoken with 15,000 church members? Not likely. Go push your agenda elsewhere.

Sent you and e-mail look forward to speaking with you.

Ron Cutsinger (class of 78)

I enjoy these conversations and intend no ill will I believe we are all on the same team even when we disagree. In fact a think that through respectful disagreement we come to a better and deeper understanding of God. I too believe the word of God is inspired. When a claim is made to truth either in the Bible or any other method such as a commercial I believe that natural human intuition is to validate that through inductive, circular, linear reasoning. So through inductive reasoning one would have to conclude that God directed the men on the councils of Nicea to include to throw out books considered canonical based upon divine inspiration. If not then it is pretty difficult to suggest that the NT canon is God inspired. Just food for thought. If we discovered through archaeology, the lost third and fourth letters of Paul to the church in Corinth, who would be the authority now to decide whether they would be added to the NT canon? I can recommend some books that I read on my quest to learn all this stuff if you are interested. My experience is that books published by cofC folks on the history of the Bible and related subjects leave out and marginalize important details and bend other facts to support previously held doctrines or conclusions. “Reading the New Testament” by Dr. Pheme Perkins who was one of the main translators of the 1994 NSRV Bible New Oxford Annotated version is one of the best books on this subject.

Peace to you and your husband

I have just ordered a DVD course from “The Teaching Company.” It’s called “History of the Bible–The Making of the New Testament Canon.”

After this course, perhaps I can answer your second question.

Incidentally, I LOVE this company. My husband and I have taken 4 courses from them and enjoyed every one.

I can probably tell you which camp it was. Bandina, Iron Springs, Brownwood, Hensel (just outside of Austin) or Koinonia on Lake Texoma. Am I getting close maybe camp Deer Run? My parents actually were the directors at camp Deer Run and I worked as a counselor at all the others. Such a small world?

Why would you conclude that I do not believe the Bible was the inspired word of God? I do! I just could not believe it without examining the evidence and finding out where and how it really came to be as the English translation I read now. This is the same quest that many of the younger generation in the church and the unchurched also are asking in their personal quest for faith. They can’t believe that it is the inspired word of God just because Timothy says so in his epistle. We have to investigate and find out for ourselves before we just believe! You asked “think we all/most believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, so aside from academic knowledge, what difference does it make?” This what difference it makes: faith without an attempt to answer the honest doubt in the depths one’s soul is not faith but rather empty religion. Faith without understanding why we believe what we believe is the pathway to fear and ignorance and is based more social religion than reliable evidence and thinking.

I am very curious about my two questions to you. I believe I have answered yours.
May I ask you why you believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God?
Do you believe that the Nicene councils were directed by the Holy Spirit in their decision of what books to add or throw out when approving the canons? If so, why?

To answer your question we read and study the Bible together and make no excuses and pull no punches. We discuss the stories and let our kids ask all the questions they want without putting answers in the mind. Sometimes my wife and I will tell our children what meaning certain Bible stories have for us personally or what it means for the broader community of faith. Here are some of our guidelines we use for studying the Bible with our children.

1. Always use contextual and back ground (exegetical) perspective
2. Do not try to use the Bible to support previously held ideas or conclusions
3. Ask lots of questions, then ask some more
4. Make every effort to read with no presuppositions
5. Understand that most importantly God is trying to reveal himself to man.
6. We don’t have to have a perfect answer for everything to have the truth and God filled meaning.
7. Take absolutely nothing out of context.
8. Ignore scripture divisions of BCV as they were not a part of the original written copies.
9. Understand that we are human and will always be improving the understanding of the Bible by the questions we ask and reasoning we use.

Sometimes the nature of God is hard to deal with, he no longer strikes people dead because they touched the Ark or anything like that, but we believe we live by a new covenant where we will eventually give an account for our faith and life here on earth. We actually just had a Bible story of Daniel that illustrates the jealous nature of God. But we don’t use God’s nature out of context.