Does Your Church have Age requirement For water baptism?

I believe all who exhibit credible evidence. I have been tremendously influenced by the author of this free book, on this very issue. I think there are some great insights on talking to kids and getting to their understanding of the Gospel.

 

The Bible doesn't say a minimum age, so we do not. We do believers baptism. Any believer may and should be baptized. The Bible doesn't say to wait a till a certain age to obey the command of believers baptism.

 

Agreed. If a child or an adult professes faith and by all appearances is genuine, we will baptize.

 

An age limit is flesh. A spirit filled pastor can tell by the spirit if the child is earnest, and in the same spirit. It is not about appearances or using the five senses.

 

Compare and contrast:

Capitol Hill Baptist Church (Mark Dever, home of the "9Marks" Calvinist organization):

Pre-20th Century non-American Baptist Charles Spurgeon (apparently he didn't get Dever's memo about Baptist "history"):

 

I was baptized after receiving Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord when I was 6 years old.

During my life I haven't strayed and never have been rebaptized.

I challenge many of the arguments made by some against the notion of child baptism. Much of their points and data is built off conjecture.

 

Baptism is the death of the old man, the one under the curse. And the birth of a new creature, who has never sinned, and is now called a son or daughter of God. I would call that a big plus.

 

Conjecture? Dever has a PhD in Ecclesiatical History from Cambridge University!

 

Perhaps you just misspoke but Baptism does nothing to kill the old man. That is what the Spiritual birth does. Baptism is simply a public confession of this.

 

Water baptism is an act of faith, putting to death the old man and rising again in Christ. Of course it's spiritual, that's a given. As Christ died and rose again. He gave us the example.

 

I'd ask for a refund lol.

 

I love Mark, but he is wrong. A famous case is Jonathan Edwards who Baptized a 7 year old. Yes, it was considered "taboo" then because of the age, but there is precedence throughout history. As well, Spurgeon Baptized children as you noted.

When Dever talks on the issue, sometimes he mentions Christman's book as a key example of what opposes his belief. For the record, Dever and Christman respect each other, but they disagree.

 

I think we need to tread carefully when it comes to child baptism but I don't support an arbitrary age cutoff. It really concerns me that in many cases someone will undergo baptism as a child and then in their late teens will seek baptism again saying they didn't really have faith the first time. Of course, if that is the case then they should be given a valid believers' baptism. One thing I would do is make very sure a child candidate for baptism has a solid understanding of faith and baptism. When it comes to a request for a "rebaptism" on the basis of the invalidity of the first one, I believe there should be an investigative process to determine the validity of the original baptism.

 

How would you investigate?