Baptism is not a formality
In many churches, people are baptised on the Sunday after the evangelistic meeting. The candidate raises a hand in the morning, someone asks for a name, and by the afternoon they go down into the water. Everybody is pleased. The baptisms get counted in the annual report.
Three months later, nobody knows where that person is.
It is not a failure of sincerity: those people are sincere, and so is the pastor who baptises them. It is a failure of order. Two things that cannot stand in for each other have been swapped round.
The order the text gives
“Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”Acts 2 : 38
Read the order of the verbs. Repent, then be baptised. Peter does not say it the other way round, and that is not a stylistic nuance.
You find exactly the same sequence with the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip preaches Jesus to him from Isaiah. The man understands. It is he who asks: "See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?" (Acts 8 : 36) Baptism comes after understanding, and it comes at his own request.
And Mark 16 : 16 sets the two in the same order: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved."
Baptism does not produce salvation: it declares it. It is a public sign of what has already happened in the heart. To baptise someone who has received nothing is not doing them good: it is getting them wet, and handing them a certificate that corresponds to nothing.
What it actually commits you to
The word Paul uses is not a ceremonial word. It is a word of the grave.
“Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”Romans 6 : 4
Buried. You do not bury someone who is still arguing. Immersion says exactly that: one life stops and another begins. The candidate who comes up out of the water does not pick up their old life where they left it — they begin another one, and the people around them will notice before they do.
That is why I refuse to handle this decision in a single morning. A man who commits himself to dying to his former life has a right to know what he is committing to.
Four weeks, and why four
I eventually settled on a course of four sessions, one a week, with an individual pastoral interview at the end. The length is not magic, but it is not arbitrary either.
The first week does not talk about baptism. It talks about salvation: repentance and new birth. We lay the foundation before the sign. And it is the session that brings the most to light — it happens that a candidate discovers, that evening, that they have never given their life to Christ. They came to be baptised; they leave converted. That week alone justifies the whole course.
The second works on the biblical meaning of immersion: what the act says, why water, why the going down and the coming up.
The third looks at the biblical examples of obedience — including that of Jesus at the Jordan, who had nothing to be forgiven and yet went down into the water.
The fourth prepares concretely: the ceremony, but above all what comes after. The commitment to walk in newness of life within a local church, among people who know you.
Each session has a teaching, a time of discussion in the group, verses to memorise and a personal assignment. The assignment counts as much as the teaching: it takes the decision out of the room.
The discussion time is not filler
If I had to keep one thing from these four weeks, it would be that one.
It is in the discussion that the real questions come out — the ones nobody ever asks in front of the whole congregation. Should I get married first? What do I do with my old practices, with the object I keep in my room? Will my family reject me? Can I still sell what I sell?
A candidate who has asked those questions before going down into the water is a candidate who lasts. The one who has not asked them will meet them anyway — but alone, and afterwards.
A word for church leaders
You buy it once; you use it with every intake of candidates. That is how I designed this course: a tool that serves again, not a book you read once.
And it can be followed individually, when there is only one candidate, in liaison with their pastor for the final interview.
It teaches believer's baptism by immersion, on the basis of Acts 2 : 38 and Mark 16 : 16. I say so plainly so that everyone knows what they are taking.
To baptise quickly is to fill a register. To baptise prepared is to build a church.
"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them… teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." (Matthew 28 : 19-20) Making disciples comes before, and teaching comes after. Baptism is in the middle — never on its own.
This text sets out the ground of the course "École de Baptême — four weeks of preparation", available in the shop.
Scripture quoted from the King James Version.