My oldest child was baptized this last week. It took three pastors from three different denominations to make it happen. Let me explain.
We are a dunking family that attends a sprinkling church. I’m not trying to convince anybody that this is the one right way to do it, but I also know what my conscience is. And I know I’ve sat through many infant sprinklings and felt nothing but support and love for that family and baby. I’ve been moved to tears by watching adults we love be sprinkled in our church. I can get behind a good sprinkling, but it just wasn’t what we believed was right for our family. And yet here we are, in a church that only sprinkles.
So when it came time for our son to be baptized, we sought the blessing of our church. Our first hope was that we’d be able to have him immersed within the context of our church, but that wasn’t possible. So we got their go-ahead to have him baptized by a pastor/mentor friend of our family. We were able to do this at a church facility that both sprinkles and dunks, but that required the permission of another pastor friend of ours to use their building. Three pastors. One baptism.
If that sounds like a lot of logistics, you’re right. If you wonder why we attend a church where we’d have to jump through these kinds of hoops to honor our conscience, you wouldn’t be the first. But we’ve found there’s something beautiful about attending a church where you don’t agree with everything.
We didn’t get into this situation on purpose. My husband and I are both well-educated on theological and denominational issues. We would have preferred to attend a church where we agreed with everything. But we accidentally became Presbyterians because that’s who loved us.
We walked into a Presbyterian church about 15 years ago, surrounded by our group home boys. We visited several different churches and watched people become immediately uncomfortable with our untraditional “family.” We wanted church to be a place of love and acceptance for these boys who had experienced a lot of wounding from the world. Walking into that Presbyterian church immediately felt like home. The boys were welcomed with open arms, as were we. Denominational differences were not at the forefront of our mind in that moment.
After a cross-country move, we had to leave that church. We tried new churches and new denominations. And yet again, we found ourselves walking through the doors of a Presbyterian church and immediately feeling at home. We were loved and our new untraditional family (formed through international adoption and foster care) was embraced. We knew we didn’t agree with every theological stance the church took, but we also knew these people were absolutely our brothers and sisters in Christ. We could lovingly (and for the most part, silently) disagree on secondary theological issues as long as we agreed on the basics.
While we accidentally got into this situation, we have come to see value of intentionally choosing a church where you don’t agree with everything.
As a church, we are meant to represent the Body of Christ, but too often we self-segregate into clumps of The Body that make us feel the most comfortable. We’ve got hands hanging out in this denomination, eyes over here, and a bunch of feet at that church on the corner. It’s just easier that way, isn’t it? If we only go to church with people who fully agree with us on each point and sub point of our denominational creeds, we create a really pleasant echo chamber. But I don’t think that’s how we were intended to be.
There may be a reason we’re drawn to a particular faith tradition. That reason may be entirely noble or rational, and it may be because of our personality quirks or our upbringing. When we attend church only with people who hold our exact same theological positions, we may “accidentally” find we are also attending church only with people from our same socioeconomic status, our same upbringing, our same personality type, our same race, our same educational level, or even with our same Spiritual gifts. This can make church life simpler and less conflictual, but that doesn’t feel like The Body to me. We were intended to be a diverse group, even when that causes challenges.
I’m not advocating being uninformed or dispassionate about theological issues. I think it’s good to have a conscience on both primary and secondary theological issues and to stick to it. But I think it’s wise to be humble and teachable. It’s good to realize we may not have access to all the answers now. It’s important to recognize what we lose in diversity of thought and experience when we self-segregate into our theological teams. It’s a great skill to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. It is possible to hold a different position from the majority without being divisive.
Sitting shoulder to shoulder in the pew with someone I disagree with on a theological issue reminds me that we are more than our theological positions. I can see the validity and reasoning in sermons on issues even when I come to a different conclusion. When church friends have brought me meals after the births of my babies, it was never contingent on whether or not we were going to baptize them. When you become church family with those you disagree with, it becomes impossible to create an inaccurate picture of them in your mind. They aren’t the enemy, the uninformed, the unenlightened or the weak. They are the ones you call in an emergency, the ones who pray over your needs, and some of them even come to your child’s dunking when they believe an infant sprinkling would have been preferable.
We are thankful for a church community that knows we hold different theological positions on secondary issues and has not let that keep us from being an active part of our church. We are glad for a group of elders that met with us, discussed our baptism decision and blessed our choice. We are thankful for a pastor who would pray over our son, even if he didn’t perform the baptism. In all of the beautiful symbolism of baptism that day, it was precious to us to see that true picture of the Body of Christ.
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