In last week’s post, I shared a couple of threads of thought regarding what it means to be a Reformed Baptist Church. Hopefully those were helpful for individuals to think the issue through. But what about when we are talking to people who are not part of our tribe? What about when someone who is not a believer asks what a Reformed Baptist church is? What about when a person who does not enjoy theological thought poses the question?
Three Types of Answers
A one-size-fits-all approach to answering a question about a church’s identity, theology, and practice is not a good idea. Different people ask from different perspectives and with different levels of interest. Thus, I believe answering the question, “What is a Reformed Baptist,” might require three different kinds of answers:
- Single Sentence
- Short Presentation
- Coffee Table Discussion
Single Sentence –It may be that a single sentence answer is all that a situation allows for or is necessary. The person asking may not be in a place to unpack any of the doctrinal differences demarking denominations. You may be speaking with a nonbeliever who could not begin to follow the discussion. You may be speaking with your sweet aunt who just wonders if you’ve joined a cult.
Short Presentation – A second kind of answer may be one you need to have at the ready for when you have a minute or two with a curious person. Salespeople call this an elevator pitch. This allows you to unpack who you are in a simple summary. It is designed to open the door for a follow-up conversation, but it does not force the issue.
Coffee Table Discussion – The third kind of answer goes deep and seeks to lay out distinctives over a longer period of time. The points that I outlined and briefly explained in my previous post could serve as a helpful guide for such a discussion about Reformed Baptists. This might take a few hours or a few meetings.
Single Sentence Response
Say you are inviting a non- Christian friend to your church that has “Reformed” as part of the name. They ask you what a reformed church is. They are not likely wanting you to tell them about the Canons of Dort or the difference in English and European mainland Reformation confessions. For the curious person needing a single sentence, perhaps you might say the following:
A Reformed Baptist church is a church that loves God, loves the Bible, loves the gospel, and loves God’s church.
That statement covers several of the points I shared in last week’s post. But it does not unpack any of them. It should leave the door open for questions if the person wants to think them through. At the same time, it will not bog you down in conversations about topics the person has never heard of.
If you are talking with someone who is a Christian and who is trying to figure out if a Reformed church is some sort of weird denomination, or if you are not sure where their question is coming from, you might say something like this:
A Reformed Baptist church is a Baptist church that is committed to the Bible, in line with historic Christianity, and informed by important doctrines that the church recovered during the Protestant Reformation.
Again, this is short and simple. It will allow you to begin a conversation about doctrine if the person wants to ask. It ties your church to historic doctrine, faithful beliefs people have held from the New Testament age and recovered—not created—during the Reformation. But it does not take you down a road of debating election when a person just wants to know if you are involved in some sort of crazy new movement.
Short Presentation
What if the person you are talking to is up for a bit more of an explanation. What can a Reformed Baptist say that will summarize things somewhat quickly without chasing rabbits? When you do not have time to go deep, but when your interlocutor is up for something more than a single sentence answer, the short presentation might work. Perhaps the following would be a good example:
A Reformed Baptist church, like other Baptist or Presbyterian churches, is a Protestant church. We believe that the Bible is our highest authority. Like other churches, we believe in 1 God who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as revealed in the Bible. And we believe in the good news that anybody can be forgiven by God because of the good news of Jesus Christ.
Reformed Baptists try to follow Scripture and do in our worship services what God has commanded. We believe that God is the Almighty and is sovereign over everything, including our salvation. We believe that all of the Bible, even the Old Testament, is God’s word and is helpful to us to know God and love him well. We believe that Jesus really is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises in the Scripture.
If this all sounds unfamiliar or new, you can read about what we believe in something old. The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 is a great place to look to read a summary of the doctrine our church believes. This is a confession that is similar to the Westminster Confession that Presbyterians hold to or the Savoy Declaration that congregationalist churches use, just with a Baptist explanation of the church and biblical covenants.
Conclusion
When someone asks you what a Reformed Baptist is, you do not have to be paralyzed. Neither should you always answer the question the same way in every situation. But if you will put a little work into knowing what the label means, and if you will put a little forethought into how you might explain it to different people in different settings, you should be able to help others understand the concept.
Pastor Travis Peterson 