By Jane Tiemersma Vogel

hen we moved from southern California to Wheaton, Ill., some 15 years ago, we encountered a number of culture shocks. Southern California has two seasons: summer and not summer. Illinois, we learned, also has two seasons: winter and road repair. The freeways in sunny California would jam up near the site of an accident with “spectator slowing”; on the gloomier Midwest tollways, however, traffic would occasionally fall prey to “sunshine slowing.” But the most striking change for us was living in a town with a church on every corner and neighbors who wanted to quiz us on our theology.

I remember introducing myself to a neighbor who asked not, “What do you do for work?” but, “What church do you go to?” Unfamiliar with the Christian Reformed Church, she tried to place it theologically by asking, “Do you believe in infant baptism or believer’s baptism?”

To which I could only answer, “Yes.”

Yes, I believe in believer’s baptism. But practically speaking, I grew up identifying baptism with babies. Part of that was surely the fact that babies were more interesting to a kid than adults were. Those cute, cooing little bundles might well add some entertainment value to a Sunday service by punctuating the sermon or the sacrament with howls, yips, or—that delight of every child trained to silence in church—uncontrollable hiccups. But I suspect that part of my instant association of “baptism” with “babies” was that infant baptisms were simply more common than adult baptisms in the church of my youth.

“Normal” Baptisms

I grew up during the baby boom, a time in which Christian Reformed couples took seriously the mandate to be fruitful and multiply. We heard the full form for the baptism of infants so regularly that we memorized the more popular phrases (“the obstinate Pharaoh and all his host” was a particular favorite); in fact, years later a friend of mine was able to bypass a mandatory pre-baptism class in a different denomination by reciting the entire Christian Reformed baptismal form verbatim.

All those covenant children were and are a blessing. Some of them are now my children’s schoolteachers, camp directors, and youth leaders. And it’s not the church’s fault that I started to think of infant baptisms as “normal” and adult baptisms as the exception.

I still remember the first time I paid attention to an adult baptism. I thought the pastor did it wrong. First the baptismal candidate made profession of faith, then he was baptized. I was stupefied. Everyone knew that the proper order was baptism, then (generally after a decade or two) profession of faith.

Possibly I was not the sharpest tack in the ecclesiastical box, but somehow in my years of churchgoing, Bible reading, and witnessing baptisms (the “normal” kind), I had incorporated Acts 2:39 (“The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call”) into my liturgical vocabulary without ever really processing what the preceding verse (“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”) might look like on a typical Sunday morning.

I actually had to have someone explain to me that what I was witnessing in that “abnormal” baptism was a biblical pattern: repentance/coming to faith, followed by baptism.

Biblical Patterns

That is indeed a biblical pattern. Or rather, part of a biblical pattern. For “how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Rom. 10:14). Over and over we see it: telling and hearing, repenting, and baptism.

• Peter pleaded with the people in Jerusalem, “‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day” (Acts 2:40-41).

• People in Samaria “believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12).

• Philip told the Ethiopian “the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?’ And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him” (Acts 8:35-38).

• “The Lord opened [Lydia’s] heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptized . . .” (Acts 16:14-15).

Scripture shows us over and over that repentance, conversion, and believer’s baptism are normal; that is, literally, the norm—God’s standard for the church wherever people still need to hear the gospel. It is we who emphasize the abnormal if we let covenant theology or family values or simple myopia and self-centeredness turn our focus exclusively to our own children, our own church, our own kind.

As our congregation launched another season of education, our pastor reminded us that, historically, Sunday school served as an evangelistic tool. While the nurture of our baptized children and youth is a godly calling, we dare not lose the vision that we equip for the purpose of reaching out. If we’re doing it right, our children know that both infant baptism and believer’s baptism are normal. And, should their neighbors happen to ask what their church believes about baptism, they can say, in the words of stanza 40 of “Our World Belongs to God,”

God reminds and assures us in baptism,
whether of those newly born or newly converted,
that his covenant love saves us,
that he washes away our guilt,
gives us the Spirit,
and expects our love in return.