What’s a Baptist?

It can be very confusing trying to work out the differences between one type of church and another. I think it is fair to say that these labels are becoming less and less important to people – and that is good thing. Our minister, Keith, is typical of many people within Baptist churches today – they haven’t always gone to a Baptist church. 

Here in Comberton we are pleased to have really good relationships with the local Anglican (Church of England) Church and also local Catholics. Our ministers regularly meet together. Each month we host Oasis Tea – which is a joint project and each summer we put on as Oasis Holiday Club together.

The things that we have in common are a lot more important than the things that make us different. Most of the differences are to do with the way that the church is run or organised.

All Baptist churches are independent of each other. Although we are a part of the Baptist Union each congregation is free to make its own decisions based on what they believe the Holy Spirit is saying to them through the Bible. So when it comes to making decisions these are made by the Members’ Meeting – rather than by the minister or the deacons/trustees.

Our current minister is an ordained Baptist minister. But that need not be the case in a Baptist church. We believe that God gives every Christian at least one spiritual gift so that together we are able to fulfill the mission that God has given us. Therefore anyone with appropriate gifts could preach, or lead a service, serve communion, officiate at a wedding or a funeral etc.

Another difference between a Baptist church and some other churches is (perhaps unsurprisingly given our name) baptism.

We believe that the model of baptism that we see in the New Testament is something we call ‘believers baptism’. That is – baptism is something that happens after a person has made a personal decision to follow Jesus. Typically this is by total immersion – the person being baptised stands in a baptism pool and is lowered backwards until they are totally under the water and then brought up again.

I expect this brief explanation has left you with more questions than you started with. We’d love to talk to you more about this, so please get in touch.