Baptism
By immersion, for people who have come to their own faith. The next date, what actually happens, and the questions nobody asks out loud.
Next baptisms — Sunday 27 September
In the morning service, with a shared lunch afterwardsWe baptise three or four times a year. There is no minimum age and no maximum.
People think about this for a long time before they mention it, so here are the answers to the questions nobody asks out loud.
You do not have to speak. Most people say a few sentences about how they came to faith. If you would rather not, somebody will read it for you, or nothing will be said at all. Nobody has ever been made to.
You wear ordinary clothes. Something dark that you do not mind getting wet, and bring a towel and a change. The water is heated.
You will not be dropped. Two people hold you and it takes about three seconds. Several dozen of the congregation have done it and will happily tell you what it was like.
What happens on the day
Start to finish, so you can picture it.
- You arrive as normal. Bring a towel, a change of clothes and something dark to be baptised in. There is a room to change in.
- The service runs as usual until about two thirds of the way through.
- You say something, or you don't. Three or four sentences about how you came to this. Written down is fine. Read out by somebody else is fine. Nothing at all is fine.
- You go down the steps into the water. It is about waist deep and it is heated.
- Two people lower you back and lift you up. Three seconds. You hold your own nose; everybody does.
- You go and change while the congregation sings, and come back for the end.
- Lunch. Everyone stays. This is not optional in any meaningful social sense.
Why immersion, and why not babies
Baptists baptise people who have come to their own faith, by putting them right under the water, because we read the New Testament as describing that and because the picture — going under, coming up — is the thing being said.
It is not a claim that people baptised as infants are not Christians. A good number of this congregation were christened as babies and were baptised again here as adults, and a good number of our friends in other churches disagree with us about it entirely and are right about plenty of other things.
If you were baptised as a baby and are wondering whether this applies to you, that is a conversation rather than a form. Ask.
Still wondering
How old do I have to be?
There is no minimum and no maximum. We have baptised an eleven-year-old and an eighty-four-year-old in the same year. What matters is that it is your decision and not somebody else's.
Do I have to become a member?
No. They usually go together and they do not have to.
I cannot swim.
Neither can several people who have been baptised here. You are held the whole time and your feet are on the floor throughout.
Can my family come if they are not churchgoers?
Please bring them. It is the single most common reason somebody comes to this building for the first time.