Someone has approached you about getting baptised. You sit down to talk to them about why they want to get baptised, what it means and to get a sense of their profession of faith. As the conversation goes on, it becomes clear that they are not there yet in terms of clear profession. They have a desire to follow God but they don’t grasp the Gospel or there is a lack of assurance
What do you do? Well first of all, I would use the opportunity to go through the Gospel with them. And I would treat it as just that, an opportunity. I’d use the imagery of baptism to help explain what it means to be saved, to be in Christ, to die and rise with him. I’d share my own testimony too.
What next? Well, my, lacking in faith, expectation is that they will usually decide that it isn’t for them yet or we will have to explain that to them. But just supposing (and shouldn’t we have more faith for this), they respond in faith and put their trust in Christ, there and then. What do you do next?
I suspect that it is tempting to assume that we should send them away to get on with the Christian life, perhaps with some discipleship input planned. We might want to see how they are progressing in terms of growing in Christian maturity. We might want to look for evidence that the profession was real. However, I’m not convinced that this is the Biblical model.
So, I’d arrange to baptise them as soon as possible so that their profession of faith is made public, visible and tangible at the earliest opportunity.
Faithroots 