Broadcasting or planting

John Piper responds to the question: Why not get one of the other 30+ elders at Bethlehem to pastor an extension church instead of showing them a video?



I am trying to tread carefully here but I think Piper's reasoning is the same as Sproul's church (St. Andrews) building a huge new edifice or any of the other very large churches pastored by famous or even "celebrity" pastors. People go to Bethlehem because of John Piper. Never been there but I am comfortable saying that and I think Piper would agree. People want to hear from Piper and if Piper left Bethlehem and planted a new church in Minneapolis, people would follow him. We saw what happened when D. James Kennedy passed on and Tullian took over. Many people didn't want a new pastor, they wanted a clone of Kennedy because that was why they went to Coral Ridge. So instead of taking the risky move of training and sending, famous pastors seem more likely to keep expanding the church they pastor.

I don't really agree with that. While the quality of preaching might go down, wouldn't the quality of fellowship go up in multiple smaller churches? Wouldn't more men and women have an opportunity to serve and minister? Men like Sproul and Piper and Tim Keller, not spring chickens by the way, have a unique opportunity to train men and send them out if the desire is to spawn more churches like the one they pastor. You can either build bigger and bigger and more widely reaching individual churches (even with multiple campuses) or you can plant lots of small, truly local gatherings. As these men pass on, who is going to take over these huge churches? They will either fade away over time or go out and get another well-known pastor to keep people coming back.

I love me some John Piper but I think Bethlehem would be better off in the long run by planting dozens of small gatherings through Minneapolis, affiliated with Bethlehem but with their own elders. What do you think? Should John Piper be broadcast to satellite locations or should they send out men to plant local assemblies? Should we seek the very best guy to minister through the Word to the maximum number of people or should we seek to see as many faithful men minister to people as possible?

More from Piper on baptism

The second sermon from Dr. Piper on baptism and church membership is available online here. It is a good summary of the biblical doctrine of believer's baptism, but he still ends with a question about admitting people into church membership who have not been Biblically baptized.

So now after two sermons, we have two things that are important. Baptism is important. And the nature of the local church as a sacred expression of the universal body of Christ is important.

Failing to be baptized is serious. Excluding genuine believers from the local church is serious.

There are godly, Bible-believing, Christ-exalting, God-centered followers of Jesus who fail to see the dreadfulness of not being baptized as a believer. And there are godly, Bible-believing, Christ-exalting, God-centered followers of Jesus who fail to see the dreadfulness of excluding such people from church membership.

The question we should ask is not only hard to answer, but it is hard to formulate. Perhaps the Lord in his mercy will show us how to do both in a way that will cut this knot for his glory. May the Lord grant a wisdom like Solomon’s or, even better, a wisdom like the One who is greater than Solomon.

To his credit, Piper does reject categorically infant bapstism. A good summary of his points were published on the Desiring God blog...

The drama of baptism gets its meaning from the gospel.

It pictures the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. It's not mainly about ritual or tradition but Jesus and his magnificent saving work of dying for sinners and rising again in triumph.

Baptism is:

a command of Jesus,
that expresses union with him,
by immersion in water,
in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit,
for believers only.

A sense of the continuity of the old and new covenants leads some people to baptize infants. But the argument for infant baptism doesn't work textually or covenantally.

Textually, the apostle Paul makes plain that baptism is for those who have been raised with Jesus through faith (Col. 2:12) and are sons of God through faith (Gal. 3:26–27). Baptism is not for those who don't have faith in Jesus—whether adult unbelievers or infants.

Covenantally, while the old-covenant sign of circumcision was administered to males after their physical birth into the national people of God, the new-covenant sign of baptism is to be administered to both males and females after their spiritual birth into the international people of God. New birth by the gospel now provides entrance into the people of God, not physical birth, and is marked by believer baptism, not circumcision.

I pray that the elders of Bethlehem Bapist continue to insist on obedience to the Gospel command and admit into the body only those who submit to Biblical baptism.

Why bother being a Baptist anyway?

The news from Minnesota, not Lake Woebegone but Bethlehem Baptist, is that they are revisiting the issue that caused so much controversy a few years ago: will they admit into membership people who were baptized as infants but don't want to be properly and Biblically baptized as adults. Traditionally, in most conservative Baptist churches, that was the case. If you were baptized as an infant and now wanted to join a Baptist church you had to undergo baptism. Not be rebaptized as infant baptism is rightly seen as illegitimate and not a true baptism anyway, but to be Biblically baptize after repentance and a public profession of faith in Christ. Now Bethlehem Baptist is questioning that practice.

The Issue: Church Membership
The issue was: How should our church relate to those who are born again, and deeply committed to the Bible and to Christ, but are not yet persuaded that their infant baptism is unbiblical and invalid? Should such believers be admitted in some cases to membership at Bethlehem? Or to put the question in the larger general way: Should the front door of the local church be roughly the same size as the door to the universal body of Christ? In other words, should we say to any person: We know you have truly entered into membership in the universal body of Christ, but you may not enter into membership in this local expression of the body of Christ?

How Important Is Membership?
Or another way to put the issue is: How does the seriousness of exclusion from local church membership compare with the seriousness of not being baptized even though, after studying the Scriptures and trying to be obedient, the unbaptized person believes that he is baptized? In the real world where genuine, Bible-believing, gospel-loving, Christ-exalting, missions-minded Christians do not agree on the meaning of baptism in the New Testament, how should we relate to each other?

Piper states that Bethlehem Baptist is concerned not with baptism per se, that they hold to an orthodox Baptist position on believers baptism. Their statement of faith certainly does. They claim this is a separate issue, an issue of membership not baptism.

But if you believe so strongly in believers baptism as Biblical, why would you admit into membership someone in rebellion against the Word, who refuses to submit to the authority of the Bible and be baptized as professing faith? Someone who apparently is relying on the act of getting sprinkled as a baby, before conversion to fulfill a very specific Biblical command? I think not and I am not sure what would motivate this.

On the other hand. what is the motivation of those seeking to join a Baptist church and not hold to Baptist theology? I fear it is based on a desire to be a member of Piper’s church, a name brand pastor. Why else would you seek to fellowship and join in covenant membership with a Baptist church if you refuse to follow one of the key distinctives of a Baptist church? I would hope that people would not join a church for such self-serving reasons, but I am cynical enough to assume that it does happen.

Should this be a conversation we should have? Certainly. We should be clear on what Biblical baptism looks like and what cchurch membership entails. But should a Baptist church abandon one of it's core convictions to bring in more members, to make rebellious Christians more comfortable, to allow some who refuse to be Biblically baptized to say "I belong to John Piper's church? I don't think so and I hope that the elders of Bethlehem Baptist agree.

(HT: Voice of the Sheep)