Baptism

Jesus told people to repent and be baptized. A simple enough instruction. The important part of the instruction is the repentance bit, the response to repenting is baptism.

Over the centuries, baptism has developed into a ritual practice and a "ticket to heaven" Today many people believe they are fine to go to heaven because they are good people and they were baptized. Repentance does not figure into it. I have not yet been baptized because of the ticket to heaven business, I originally wanted to unwind people's thinking that Baptism gets you to heaven. It isn't, it doesn't and it never will, Jesus paid our debt and his grace and forgiveness gets us to heaven when we believe we are sinners and he is God and able to forgive.

Some misconceptions about baptism among people include

• It is the way to heaven, once you are baptized you are Christian enough to go to heaven, this is an almost entirely non christian view. Nobody who I know to be a Christian by their lives and words believes this as the bible doesn't support it.
• Baptism is a public declaration of what I believe. Many Godly christians think this but unless I missed the right verse the bible doesn't support this. If it is a public declaration, why can't I get up in church and say I believe Jesus is God and has the power to forgive sins and to raise us from the dead on the last day, that with the help of the Holy Spirit I am striving to live with Jesus as king of my life. That is a public declaration of what I believe, why the water?
• Baptism is a visible demonstration of what I believe (I think that could be worded better). This is getting closer I think to the biblical meaning of baptism. However it still gives more credit to it then is due. My christian daily life should be a visible demonstration of what I believe, a baptism is a bit of a one hit wonder so not really going to do this well.
• Baptism is to encourage other Christian. ??? where does it say that in the bible? It may encourage a christian to see a non christian that they have evangelized come to fully understand what it is to be a christian and to be baptized, but that is not a biblical reason (correct me if I am wrong)

In the bible, simply put, baptism signifies the end of the old life of ignoring God and having myself or another God as ruler of my life and the beginning of having Jesus as king of my life. This makes baptism very important to a convert, one who has come to Jesus from a life openly serving other gods including self. It is to show themselves and their families and friends that they belong to Jesus now and their old life is finished. 

I grew up always believing Jesus is God and he has a right to be king of my life. As I got older I questioned what I believe and decided for myself that yes, Jesus is still king in my life. At no point has there been a stopping of the old life and beginning of a new one, I have simply (by God's grace) grown into my faith and understanding. All the time I am learning but I have never not believed the gospel of Christ. So, do I need to get baptized? I don't believe so. Is it a salvation issue? no. 

Please feel free to POLITELY comment if you have any thoughts or wisdom to add or things I missed.

Question time

When we planted our church in Maitland, the first and planting pastor used to have question time after every sermon. Occasionally time restraints would prevent this but it was pretty much an expected and accepted thing. There are good and bad bits about question time at church however the good definitely outweighs the bad.

The bad bits can be it makes a long sermon longer (not a problem if it interesting) or worse you can have a second mini sermon from the congregation instead of a question. This was a big problem at this stage of the church and the pastor became pretty skillful at heading it off early. Those are the only two downers that I can see for having questions on a sermon.

The bonuses are big though. Firstly in order to ask a question, one needs to listen to the whole sermon to make sure it is an intelligent question and wasn't answered during the sermon. Secondly it makes the members of the congregation think about the bible themselves instead of taking the pastors word for it. Thirdly it means that the pastor needs to put in a lot of preparation time so he can answer the questions. Fourthly it keeps him honest because there will always be somebody who says "I noticed you skipped over this bit, could you just explain that?" Or "I was a bit confused when you said this, could you explain what you meant about this verse?"

It can be a stressful thing for a preacher to do but I think it is definitely worth it and would encourage all church leaders to take this line, even if it means that it makes church goes past the designated time (perhaps we cab drop a song or just finish a bit late).

writing bible studies

I have never given a sermon, I hopefully never will, but a sermon is essentially telling people what this passage of the bible means. The Holy Spirit helps the preacher to understand and to put it into words. Writing a bible study is different. It is working out what the passage means and then writing questions to assist a group to also work out what it means.

Bible study writing is safer, I think, because it is harder to accidentally teach heresy. However it does not make it easier. How to write questions to invite discussion on the right topics, not, for example, social lives. How to get a structure that helps the overall passage make sense, structure and I are not friends at the best of times. How to word questions to make them understandable.

Then leading the bible study is a whole other barrel of laughs. I have only led teens but the variety of bible knowledge, attention span, focusing ability, and ability to say something that may be wrong or only nearly write at the risk of being thought a fool, is the same as in an adults bible study. Adults may have a longer attention span then teens (or they pretend they do) but they also suffer from "what if I get it Wrong" disease. "Talking over the top of others" syndrome (I suffer from this a little), and the dreaded "I have spoken the correct answer so let us move on" difficulty. I have encountered all these and more while leading youth bible studies. The difficulty is to encourage the over confident kids to allow the less confident kids to answer, especially if it is an easier question. Not to say that quieter kids are less smart, it is just nice to give them a victory occasionally (this is where I struggle with the talking over the top of others thing).

I suspect that, while heretically safer to write a bible study then a sermon, there are more likely to be disputers in a bible study group then a sermon congregation if one begins teaching that Jesus and God are not even related, both are equally difficult to write. They are also both difficult to teach with, for different reasons.