Baptism is a happy ceremony we encourage every believer to enjoy.
Jesus told His disciples to baptise people who choose to convert from their old lives and decide to follow Him, by faith. We joyfully continue that tradition.
Baptism declares:
We baptise people who have given us good enough reason to believe they are trusting Jesus for their eternal salvation and have truly committed* to live a new life in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told His disciples to specifically baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the nature of the one true God that Jesus reveals to us. God is trinity (1 God, 3 persons) and by baptising someone in that name we are both declaring the disciple to be a true Christian and also honouring the God who they have committed themselves to.
Practically we almost exclusively practice baptism by full immersion, because it seems to most powerfully symbolise the believer’s full immersion into Christ’s death and new life.
The pattern that we see in Scripture is people being baptised, by other Christians, once it is clear that they are a true believer and follower of Jesus.
This requires, firstly, that the individual is able to grasp the fundamental truths that baptism communicates, and secondly that they are sufficiently aware of the public commitment they are making.
It also requires the church leaders to be confident enough that the person they are baptising is both of these things.
For that reason we do not consider baptising children at an age where we think that understanding and sense of responsibility is too ambiguous.
As a general principle, the earliest we would start to encourage children to think about being baptised would be towards the end of their time in our Accelerate children’s group.
Getting baptised is a fantastic thing to do and something you will never forget. If you’d like to speak to someone about getting baptised please email and we’d love to guide you through our process.
