Gratefully Baptist
By R. Keith Parks

(Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Keith Parks chapter in Why I Am a Baptist: Reflections on Being Baptist in the 21st Century, printed here with permission from Smyth & Helwys Publishing.)

“I am an old ignorant woman, and I don’t understand many things, but I do understand about believing in Jesus.”

Minah was giving her testimony, required of candidates for baptism at Iman Baptist Church in Semarang, Indonesia. At age forty-six she was considered old, because Indonesians’ average life expectancy at the time was less than thirty years. And though she was illiterate, she was not ignorant.

I found myself thinking that since she did not read and since I had been her teacher in the new Christians’ class, everything she knew about being a Christian depended upon me. I was praying that I had taught her correctly and covered all the bases and that neither she nor I would be embarrassed by her testimony. But I had forgotten what it means to be a Baptist kind of Christian.

Minah repeated, “Although I don’t understand many things, I do understand about being a Christian.” She looked at my wife, Helen Jean, and me for support, and then she continued. You could sense she was trying to explain what is beyond explanation. And then she added, “Why, it is just like Jesus was down inside my heart explaining these things to me.”

She sat down, the congregation voted to baptize her, and I relearned a significant lesson: I was not her real teacher. As Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit had taught her and was continuing to teach her.

Minah’s testimony reminded me that Baptists believe when persons trust Christ, His Spirit interacts directly with them, and they are not dependent on anyone else as a go-between.

Choice is personal, deliberate.

In choosing to trust Jesus Christ as one’s personal Savior, a person is born into the family of God and becomes a member of the body of Christ. The experience cannot be taught by a missionary or learned in a catechism. It occurs only in a personal encounter with the living Christ and a deliberate choice to follow Him.

I am Baptist because we understand the New Testament to teach that individuals, when able to decide between right and wrong, must make a personal choice to accept Christ as his or her Savior. When this occurs, the Holy Spirit does in fact come to live in that person and is his or her spiritual teacher.

The New Testament, however, does not stop with individual conversion. Inevitably the Holy Spirit links that individual with a fellowship of believers. I am convinced that the local church has unique significance. In fact, the vast majority of references to eklesia (“the church” or “called-out-ones”) in the New Testament is to the local gathering of Christians.

Oneness is Christ-breathed.

This miracle organism is the group through which Christ has promised to work out on earth what has been determined in heaven. This group becomes authentic because a Christ-breathed fellowship (koinonia) unites them to Christ and to each other. Having one’s name on a church roll, believing certain doctrines, or participating in worship or activities does not create a true church. Oneness with each other in Christ does!

A fellowship that practiced those distinctives that we as Baptists have declared through the years to be ours:

• conversion of persons who reach the age of accountability and baptism of believers only

• priesthood of every believer

• autonomy of local congregations

• all beliefs and practice based on the Bible

• separation of church and state

• associational principle: autonomous churches choose to cooperate to reach the world in a way none can do alone

The first four distinctives are held by most Baptists. The fifth is a common belief among Baptists in America. The sixth is the added concept that formed the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845.

Each principle is essential. Any substitution radically changes the nature of what Southern Baptists have believed. These six basic beliefs are woven together and are so interdependent that to remove any one of the threads is to unravel the whole Baptist cloth.

The six beliefs are spiritually joined to each other. The health of the body requires all of them in relationship. The priesthood of each believer is an outgrowth of the basic experience of personal regeneration.

Direct access to God.

Everyone who comes into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ has direct access to God and God’s Word through the Holy Spirit.

As believers come together in a church, each one is to submit his or her spiritual relationship voluntarily to the combined spiritual understanding of all the members.

The New Testament teaches that spiritual wisdom channeled through the local group provides more mature understanding. Each group is accountable directly to God and only to God. How can any outside individual or group be in a position to understand God’s leadership for that local group?

The marvel of Southern Baptists is that independent individuals submit to autonomous churches, and that in turn, these autonomous churches freely give what no one has authority to take. Churches surrender a portion of their independence to achieve the extension of the Kingdom of God.

This Kingdom extension, usually referred to as the joint mission effort of cooperating churches, is challenging enough to combine the prayers, finances, and lives of missionaries of all involved churches. No other cohesive force has ever held Baptists or any other group together in such numbers with such results.

Trend rejects Baptist heritage.

Historically, other Baptists have come together around doctrine. Inevitably they have divided as they disagreed about interpretations of scripture or correct doctrine. Current Southern Baptist leadership is moving down this path. Not only does this trend reject Southern Baptist heritage, but also it leads to fragmentation.

Baptists who hold traditional biblical convictions inevitably reject state control of religion along with religious control of the state. This is the scriptural principle based on “rendering to Caesar what belongs to Caesar … and to God what belongs to God” (Matt 22:21) and obeying God rather than humans (Acts 4:19-20). But it is also an inescapable conclusion of genuine Baptists that their source of authority is different. No authority, neither religious nor civil, can intervene.

Genuine Baptists act on the basis of cooperation. The state must coerce. There is absolutely no basis for either controlling the other.

Creedalism excludes.

Southern Baptists have traditionally been confessional, not creedal Christians. Confessional Christians invite others who are in agreement to join their group. Creedal Christians define exact beliefs and determine whether or not others are acceptable to join their group. In the confessional approach those who join determine whether they agree and want to join. In the creedal approach the keepers of the creed determine who qualifies to join. I personally am still a Southern Baptist because I hold Baptist convictions and am a member of a Southern Baptist church. But our denomination has changed.

Leaders eroding Baptist principles.

Current national leaders are eroding Baptist principles such as priesthood of the believer, autonomy of the local church, and separation of church and state. They are moving from a confessional Baptist approach to a creedal one. They are trying to substitute doctrine for missions as the Convention’s cohesive force. Not only has there been a great loss in the change of structure, but also the very essence of being Baptist has been radically altered.

Yet the heritage of Southern Baptists is being lived out now, I believe, in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. That is why I am a part of CBF. Once again Baptists are joined together around missions. Our historic Baptist principles are valued and practiced. There is hope for a real Baptist future.

I am Baptist, nurtured as a Southern Baptist and continuing those beliefs and practices as part of CBF. I have found biblical, spiritual freedom among these free and faithful Baptists. I am Baptist because of the conviction that our distinctives are biblical … No person or group of persons caused me to become Baptist. I was influenced and challenged in churches, in the Baptist Student Union on a state campus, and in seminary. The theories I learned in those settings were refined and strengthened while I was a pastor and a missionary. They have been nurtured by missionaries, work colleagues, and Christian friends. Just as no group made me Baptist, no group can coerce me to surrender my heritage of convictions.

Certainly there are other authentic expressions of Christianity, but I am grateful mine is Baptist.

September 1999