{"id":9795,"date":"2024-08-01T03:54:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T03:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9795"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","slug":"becoming-a-baptist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9795","title":{"rendered":"BECOMING A BAPTIST"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have a confession.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Before I became a pastor for an American Baptist church, the burning question I secretly wanted to ask a Baptist was &#8230; why center an entire denomination around the rite of baptism?<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other denominational names made a fair amount of sense:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Some were named after their founder &#8211; like the Lutherans.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>The Methodists decided to take an intended insult and make it their identity.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Other denominations tried to corner the market &#8211; calling themselves simply Disciples of Christ or Church of Christ.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But why claim <i><b>baptism <\/b><\/i>as your identifier?<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After all, you&#8217;ve never heard of a gathering of Communionists.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But a year and a half in, I am starting to appreciate how central baptism is to the Christian life &#8211; or at least how central it is supposed to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is all about that vast gulf between before and after meeting Jesus.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And THAT has reason to be front and center in our churches&#8217; lives, no matter the denomination.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pray for me &#8211; this coming Sunday is my first opportunity to baptize anyone as an official Baptist preacher! I will be baptizing a father and his son and I am very excited.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a confession.\u00a0 Before I became a pastor for an American Baptist church, the burning question I secretly wanted to ask a Baptist was &#8230; why center an entire denomination around the rite of baptism? Other denominational names made a fair amount of sense: But why claim baptism as your identifier? After all, you&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9796,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9795\/revisions\/9796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}