IMB Baptism Policy

It's been a while since I've posted, however, I felt it necessary to write this article. If you do a Google search for "IMB Baptism Policy" or "Hammer Open Letter" you will quickly see the controversy within the International Mission Board on its baptism policy.

For many of us this is simply an academic and/or theological debate, and for a long time, that's what it was for me as well. Until today. Today, the policy effected my family and me personally. This morning I received a phone call from the IMB telling me that I would need to be re-baptized by a baptist church and that my original baptism would not be recognized by the trustees.

Let me recount my baptism for you and then you can judge the "biblicalness" of it.

I was baptized as an infant, but after accepting Christ as my Savior in college I saw the need to be baptized by immersion not for salvation, but to publically identify myself with Jesus Christ. So a few years ago, I was baptized, by immersion, by my wife's father, an American Baptist pastor. All sounds biblical and good, right? Wrong. Here is where the issue comes up.

At the time of my baptism, my wife's father was the interim pastor for a covenant church in their (very) small town of Lyons, NE. The covenant denomination as a whole practices baptism by sprinkling or immersion, but in no way would my wife's father baptize by sprinkling, which is why he held the baptismal service at his house. So, I was baptized in a hottub, by immersion, by an american baptist pastor, who happened to be preaching God's Word in a covenant church. Complicated? Yes. Unbiblical? Definitely not.

Yet, according to the IMB my baptism is invalid because the authority that it was done under was the 'covenant' church. Here I thought we baptized under the authority of Jesus Christ? And so, even though my beliefs about baptism were 100% biblical and the beliefs of the person baptizing me were 100% biblical, my baptism is not recognized by the IMB because of "the building the pastor happened to be serving in at the time.

I believe in and support the IMB and its missionaries 100%; however, it puts a whole new perspective on things when these extra-biblical policies hit home like they have with me today.