"Online" Baptism? Can/Should a Church Internet Campus Baptize via Webcam?

“Online” Baptism? Can/Should a Church Internet Campus Baptize via Webcam?

Posted on November 05, 2009
Viewed 846 times
(24) comments

A video on YouTube shows a woman being baptized at her home bathtub in Georgia. The pastor is at the church, Flamingo Road Florida. Both parties are connected through internet webcams.

This is actually quite old (February of 2008), but I just saw a newspaper article written up on this.

Click here to read the article (that shares different views on whether or not this should be done)...

So... what do YOU think?

Comments

if you want a Globally Recognized Avatar (the images next to your profile) get them here. Once you sign up, your picture will displayed on any website that supports gravitars.

CS on Thu, November 05, 2009

No, no, no. There is a reason why people should have local pastors and belong to a local body with other saints. The ordinances of the Church is one major reason why.

—
CS
Chris Dillingham on Thu, November 05, 2009

In short, I think this is preferable to no baptism at all, but I think the spirit of the biblical text about baptism suggests a need for an in-person experience. I’ve been a part of several online baptism experiences that didn’t even have real water—we essentially baptized the avatar of the person in the image of water in the virtual world. Is it a “real” baptism? No. Does it accomplish the symbolism of baptism? Yes. Is it a spirit-filled moment where online friends and church family can celebrate with the new believer? Absolutely!

More of my thoughts on the matter are here: http://www.infinitechurch.com/baptism.htm
Stephen Wright on Thu, November 05, 2009

Congratulations to Alyssa and to the great people at my church Flamingo Road! Welcome, Alyssa, to the family of God. Why are we condemning how someone comes to Christ instead of celebrating when it happens? Paul did not do that. Jesus did not do that. The Gospel is being preached; we should rejoice! I’m glad to be part of a church that is being innovative in fulfilling the Great Commission.
CS on Thu, November 05, 2009

“Why are we condemning how someone comes to Christ instead of celebrating when it happens?”

I am just as filled with joy as anyone else when someone becomes a Christian. But that’s not the point of this article—it’s talking about the wisdom in doing baptisms via webcam. (Unless, of course, you believe that her baptism is the event where she came to Christ, in which case we may have a deeper theological discussion here.)

My objection is that even though we may have the technology for something like this to happen does not make it a wise endeavor. I’m in favor of the way Paul and John did it, with hands-on interaction with people, preceded by discipleship and the demonstration of faith.

—
CS
bobby on Thu, November 05, 2009

Seriously, I don’t see the issue. Chris mentioned baptizing avatars. I agree with him. That’s an issue. But in this case, there was a person, there was water, they were dunked, they professed faith, and they did it in front of lots of people. Seems like that fits every important point of Christian baptism. When Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunich, it was them right there whereever they could find water. So the bathtub shouldn’t be a problem. CS mentions hands on interaction, but there was a person there, hands on, performing the baptism.

I think that brings out a bigger question for me. Why does it even have to be her being his hands to baptize her? I guess some are of the persuasion that only a “pastor” can baptize. But I tend to believe any Christ Follower can baptize another person. Just another reason it seems legit and like something to celebrate to me.

The only problem I had was the kinda cheesy music in the background.
matt on Mon, November 09, 2009

my problem is they barely know the people that are involved in the baptism - that is NOT community
Steve Long on Mon, November 09, 2009

CS
I almost have enough energy to step up to your ‘baptism’ challenge…..but I almost don’t see the point. Your use of the word ‘theological’ let the air out of my balloon. I am not into theological discussions but I am in to truth. Theology is a badmitton game that academics play. It is a word that is used to bully novices. Truth is where the real search is. Also, this forum is not a suitable place for mano-a-mano. The conversation would receive mortar rounds from every direction and confusion would ensue.
CS on Tue, November 10, 2009

Steve Long:

“I am not into theological discussions but I am in to truth.”

Truth, in Christ, is found in His Word, the Bible. And to study the Bible to find truth is to engage in theological matters.

So if someone claims to have come to faith through baptism, in a search for truth, we have to look at the theology found in the Bible to see if that is how someone truly comes to faith or not. (Which it does not say, anyway.)

“Also, this forum is not a suitable place for mano-a-mano. The conversation would receive mortar rounds from every direction and confusion would ensue.”

Todd is gracious enough to allow for open discussion and discourse from multiple angles when done in a spirit of respect and with candor. You can ask many people here, like Peter Hamm, where he and I may go at it for pages with differing viewpoints, but we still love each other as brothers.

—
CS
Steve Long on Tue, November 10, 2009

Your initial issue raises the question whether one comes to Christ through baptism. That phrase is a theological construction because that concept is not found in the N.T. Becoming a disciple of Christ seems more consistent with What happens after we quit being a disciple of ourselves or some other and begin to call on Jesus. This is a consistent thread that binds the Old and New Testament (Gen.4:25, “At that time men began to call upon the name of the Lord.”
The angle of your presentation has changed tomewhat to ” if someone claims to have come to faith through baptism”. To parse it as written it seems that you argue against baptism preceding beleif (faith). I would agree with you that baptism makes no sense without faith because it is faith that makes a baptism a baptism and not a bath.
Here is where I am aiming because I suspect that what you are really saying (and I just want to be absolutely sure of your fundamental issue) is that baptism isn’t neccessary to salvation. If that is your view then I heartily disagree. I know that this forum allows for some pretty outer orbit dialogue but that is not my concern. I think the moderator (Todd Rhodes) has created this site for people who like to think….and maybe argue a bit. My concern is that any discussion would become frayed by so many contributions from every direction that nothing meaningful could result. The matter is one that draws out fervency in acholytes of either argument and there are so many schools of developed thought that it would be hard to maintain any particular thread of logic because someone would interject a different argument in the larger discussion before the present one had been fully developed and examined. This topic does not process like a topic like say, “should Ted Haggard start an new church?” It is best processed by people deeply interested in the matter and committed to searching out what exactly God has said about it. In this environment the best that could be expected is that peaceful disagreement would prevail because we would weary of the tedious typing involved in laying the subject open with the worst outcome being a mortar lobbing contest.
CS on Tue, November 10, 2009

Steve Long:

“The angle of your presentation has changed tomewhat to ” if someone claims to have come to faith through baptism”.”

My initial statement about theology when Stephen posted, above, that we should be proud about when someone comes to faith. The juxtaposition of that against this post about baptism made it sound as though the act of baptism is synonymous with being saved. That’s why I made that comment.

“Here is where I am aiming because I suspect that what you are really saying (and I just want to be absolutely sure of your fundamental issue) is that baptism isn’t neccessary to salvation. If that is your view then I heartily disagree.”

Baptism does not save. If it did, that would violate Ephesians 2:8-9.

Instead, baptism is an action that all believers should perform as obedience to the Lord for His saving Grace. It is a symbol of the death and resurrection found in Christ.

Now, if someone claims to be a Christian and refuses to get baptized, that shows something wrong with their faith, and it would be legitimate to call their faith into question in light of Scripture. Is that, perhaps, what you mean?

As for discussions, multiple points of view are good. Not everything is a two-sided issue.

—
CS
Steve Long on Wed, November 11, 2009

Nope. I do agree with you that a person refusing baptism even though Jesus commanded that baptism is part of the ..‘Go into all the world’..has a faith that is suspect. I step a little further than that though. I do not think that baptism and faith are exclusive which is the position you must hold if you rely on Ephesians 2: 8-9 as a foundation for your point of view. In Acts 2: 38-9, Peter instructs those who asked what they should do after he explains to them who Jesus actually is according to the prophets. He says…well I suspect you already know. In this passage he attaches baptism to the remission of sins and the receiving of the indwelling Spirit. I Peter 3: 21 strengthens the essential nature of baptism by saying “It is baptism that NOW saves you not as a washing of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience.” It seems to me that a person who has just dealt with the Creator about thier sins (they have been remitted) would be able to now respond to the Creator with a clear conscience. In verses 18-20 of that passage the analogous ‘shadow’ of baptism was an actual saving of 8 souls by the agency of water. Sure, they obeyed and built an ark (so in like manner we can agree that an aspect of baptism is obedience) but what saved their bacon is thatthey passed through the flood that followed and entered another age. No one else did although they probably started ernestly beleiving as the water rose.
The only way that Acts 2:38 , I Peter 3:21 and Ephesians 2:8-9 can exist in harmony without giving one privelege over the other is if theyare somehow unified. Furthermore we must include the instruction of Romans that confessing with our mouth is essential to salvation too. These ideas came from the same eternal mind so they are equally true without excluding the other.
CS on Wed, November 11, 2009

Steve Long:

Let’s put this all to a practical question: If someone comes to faith and repentance in Christ, but dies before being able to be baptized, would that person go to Heaven?

—
CS
Steve Long on Wed, November 11, 2009

CS
I noticed that you did not respond to the assertion I made at the close of my last reply. Are you unwilling to to recognize the truth of it and the logic. God likes logic ala’ “Come let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet I will make them white as snow.” Our God is a reasonable being.
I will reply to your question though.

“If someone comes to faith and repentance in Christ, but dies before being able to be baptized, would that person go to Heaven?”

I cannot say who God will save because He is God and I am so ‘not God’ that I am utterly incompetent to declare what any other persons eternal situation is. My response and responsibility to the Creator and Savior is to correctly present His instruction to others and He sorts out the personal details. See I only have to teach others what God has said on a particular matter. They may accept or reject it. If the words I spoke were prompted by God Spirit then the hearer answers to God not me.
Let me suggest something to you to think about though.
Before the Heavens opened up and the fountains of the deep burst forth there were only 8 people who beleived Jonah’s warning. Then the rain began and people realized that they should have acted instead of jeering. Imagine them banging on the outside of the ark (they were still alive and pretty urgent about the disaster that loomed). Their beleif was untimely…too late. Do you think God could read their hearts and they embraced their new found beleif. He could see that they really understood what was about to happen to them. That same God makes a judgment about the person who accepts Jesus on their deathbed. It was an ark that took the 8 into the New age. It is baptism that takes us into the eternal age. I would not want to be responsible for giving mushy lessons about the ark ride that carries us into the eternal age.
Why do you think that I Cor. 3:11-13 says this, “11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work.” Reflect on the wood, hay or straw portion. Now if the mission is threefold-go, baptise and teach (or disciple) and we skimp on part of it maybe that turns what we thought was gold, silver and precious stones into burnable stuff.
CS on Thu, November 12, 2009

Steve Long:

Earlier you said:

“Here is where I am aiming because I suspect that what you are really saying (and I just want to be absolutely sure of your fundamental issue) is that baptism isn’t neccessary to salvation. If that is your view then I heartily disagree.”

Then when I asked that hypothetical question, you said:

“I cannot say who God will save because He is God and I am so ‘not God’ that I am utterly incompetent to declare what any other persons eternal situation is.”

In the spirit of, “come, let us reason together,” I’m having a tough time reconciling these thoughts. If you don’t know who God will save, then how do you know for certain how He would do it, including baptism?

Logic would dictate if that were a certain path to take, you would be able to know who God would save via that path. And conversely, if you knew who God would save, you would know the means by which He would do it.

—
CS
Steve Long on Thu, November 12, 2009

God is sovereign and I am not. My comments about the ark should give you a pretty good understanding of what I beleive God’s nature is about people who at the last instance try to get in the ark. If one thing is left out of the eternal equation, faith confession, baptism, obedience to the end the scripture is very plain about the consequences. What I see in this question of yours is an attempt to make me seem judgmental when all I am reporting on is what the scripture plainly reveals. Do you beleive that a person who does not confess with his mouth (Romans) can be saved? Do you beleive that disobedient people can be saved (people who are not sorry for their sins and continue in them)? I hope not but The Spirit of God speaking through Peter said ’ “it is baptism that now saves you and through Paul the same Spirit said, By faith you have been saved. No other alternatives are offered by the Spirit, alternatives like, ‘except in the case of a deathbed confession’ then baptism isn’t neccessary.
A fair question from you would be, Do you beleive that there are exceptions to baptism?... and my answer would be none that I would dare teach because they would not come from the scripture. Therefore if you teach someone that it is not neccesary for them to be baptised to be saved then you will not be able to find scripture that supports your statement. You will find scripture that says you are saved by faith and confession saves you but neither of those positions argues against baptism saving you. They just speak to different ESSENTIAL aspects of your salvation. I would not dare argue baptism to the exclusion of faith or confession…or obedience.
Understand this, my view of baptism is that it is where the Spirit ceases to be an outside agent and instead becomes an indwelling agent of our salvation. This is an important thing because according to Ephesians 1:14 the indwelling Spirit is a guarantee of our salvation.
In the natural world there are 4 fundamental forces, gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, which can be found in chemical bonds and the strong force which maintains all of the positively charged (and thus repelling forces to each other) protons together in the nucleus. Early in the history of the developement of the theory of these forces they were all thought to be independent of each other (very much like some people think faith, confession, baptism, and obedience are). Albert Einstein changed peoples view on this and the race is on to unify these forces. We spend billions on atom smashers to verify ther expanding theory to bring about a grand unification of 4 disparate forces. The unification of the natural forces is in Jesus as Colossians 1:17b says, ” in Him all things hold together.” It is not just the forces of the material universe that cohese in Jesus but also the spiritual ‘structures’ of faith, baptism…etc. They appear in scripture as aspects of the same continent and not as separate islands that we can camp on and accuse people on the other island of understanding scripture wrongly. Somehow…in Jesus they are ALL together and so salvation is incomplete without any one of them.