Why A Baptist?

My first exposure to church was the North Jackson Baptist Church in Jackson, Tennessee. It was a block from my home and there's where my parents sent me at age 7. The Lord saved me at age nine.

I went where my parents went, which was always to a Baptist church. But it wasn't until I was a young adult that I began to test what I believed as a Baptist against other views. I was prepared to abandon my Baptist beliefs if they could not survive a rigorous test.

But they did, and my re-examination of my beliefs only strengthened my conviction that they were Biblical.

I think such a re-examination is healthy.

 

If you read my brief testimony on the "What were you doing ... ?" thread, you will know I'm unique. I became a Christian just three and a half months shy of my 41st birthday. I'm a "4%-er." Only four percent of Christians believe in Him after 40.

I was raised in a Methodist church that had mostly Baptists as members. It was a small rural farm-community church that had been there for 90 years or so -- now it's 155. You have to understand, back then, seven miles, which is how far it was into town, was a "long ways" to go to church or anywhere else if one didn't have to go. The church was one of the last circuits the UMC had in the country. The pastor was there every other week. In the off weeks, a deacon would preach, and all the deacons had come out of a Baptist background. The preaching was totally different, and I followed my mom's lead -- Dad didn't go much -- and disparaged the preaching of the Baptists. Mom had been raised in the UMC, and the Baptists were mostly of what I know now to have been IFB and Primitive backgrounds.

When I was 11, the circuit was dissolved and the church had a new full-time minister assigned, and Mom didn't care for him. He blared Christian music over loudspeakers every Sunday morning and preached a lot like the Baptists did, which is to say -- please take no offense anyone -- legalistically. Mom was big on grace, and we didn't hear much about grace from the new minister. It was mostly "do this and don't do that." We just quit going.

I knocked around in and out of various churches, including flirting with the Catholic Church, for a good 30 years. My best friend in Vietnam was the son of a black Southern Baptist pastor from Tupelo, and he witnessed to anyone he could get to sit still for two minutes, including me. My problem was, I could only sit still with him in that mode for a minute 45 seconds. What I didn't know was that I was hearing what he was saying, and it stayed with me for years. He died on 4 February 1972 in the A Shah Valley on a badly botched op, and I went into revenge mode -- for 21 years. I suffered PTSD, anger management issues, and problem drinking if not outright alcoholism.

Fast forward. After getting out, suffering through my addictions and a divorce, I found myself going to a Baptist church -- SBC, this time -- and beginning to recall what Brian, my friend, had repeated often all those years ago. It had made sense to me even then, though I wouldn't admit it. Hearing it again, applying what I heard to the condition of my life, I came to Christ. The messages and beliefs I was absorbing made sense from the start, and I've changed my opinions only slightly over the 21 years I've been a Christian through my own careful and exhaustive Bible studies, and those opinions comfortably line up with SBC doctrine.

The balance of love, judgment, grace, mercy, responsible living in Christ all have stabilized my previously chaotic, out-of-control life and inspired me to become the addictions and marriage & family counselor I've become. I still build houses because it's fun, I like it, and it provides for retirement. Christ is always first with me. When I met my then-not-yet-wife and explained that to her, she immediately acknowledged that is also what she believed, and while she had always been independent and a borderline feminist, she admits now that what she was really looking for was a man who would gently take the reigns of leadership in the home while respecting and honoring her and the abilities and gifts God has given her.

That's how we live, and it is through Christ and Christ alone. That it happens to also align with SBC Baptist doctrine is nice, but if it didn't, we wouldn't be in an SBC Baptist church.

 

Raised in the Swedish Lutheran church. After coming to the U.S., I attended a Pentecostal church for a time. Never was comfortable there- nice people, but they were nuts. Wandered into a Baptist church with an interesting, intelligent pastor who taught. Stayed and was fed.

Been Baptist since.

 

Ditto......

 

easy answer, have you checked out MethodistBoard.com ? == boring

 

The question that R D 2 posed in his OP reminds me of an old anecdote that this old Baptist pastor posed to one of his members:

PASTOR: Tell me, brother, if you weren't a Baptist....then what would you be?

MEMBER: Don't rightly know, Pastor. How about you; what would YOU be if you weren't a Baptist??

PASTOR: Well, I tell you brother....If I weren't a Baptist, I'd be ashamed of my self!!! :laugh::laugh:

 

Why am I baptist? ...ah, let me count the ways.

Well, first, it's easier to tell some one that I'm Baptist vice trying to explain that I'm a member of a United, First Self-Righteous, Free Reign, One Half Full Gospel, Serpent Handling, Church of the Trinity, Glory to Mary Congregation Pastor'd by the Most Reverend, Dr. Shirley Smith..., you know the one. It's just over the county line there in Chick-a-Lupa County where all the Lodge Brothers congregate. :wavey:

Second, the man that lead me to the Lord was a Missionary Baptist.

 

Well you snookered me, I looked, of course it's boring, it doesn't exist!!

 

Until I saw this, I hadn't tried the link. Yeah, things that don't exist are pretty boring, I'd agree!

What amused me was the message I got from my browser:



If your screen isn't resolved fine enough to read it, it says "Firefox has determined that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

The problem can sometimes be caused by a disabling or refusing to accept cookies."

Hey! I accept cookies! Cake, pie and ice cream too!

Yes, I know what it means.

 

I became a Christian while a nominal Roman Catholic. I began my Christian journey in the Assembly of God denomination. I became disenchanted with charismania and walked away from the Lord for a few years. In His mercy God brought me to repentance and I started attending a conservative Baptist church in Kearny, NJ. I have remained Baptist now for 30 years. Why? A commitment to the proper teaching of the Word of God. Baptists have historically been people of the book. That is why I remain Baptist.