Does it bother you that there are so many different denominations? If Christianity is true, shouldn’t there be just one kind of church? How can we know if we are in the one “true” denomination? I was once pastoring in a small town of about 5000 people. In that town, we had about a dozen…
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There is much confusion about the topic of separation between the church and state. Some think that it means that no politician can mention God or the government cannot provide support for any faith group. That is not the case at all. The secular concept of the separation is that a nation should not establish…
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One of the essentials of Baptist beliefs is the focus on the local congregation. This is something that differentiates Baptists from other groups. Although we belong to a “denomination” called that Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec, the focus is more on a bottom up than a top down structure. I put denomination in quotes…
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Baptists have always been about outreach. Traditionally Baptists have been strong in missions and many Baptists were prominent early promoters of the modern missionary movement. How evangelism and missions are done over the centuries has changed, even though the message has remained the same. We recognize that some overseas missionary efforts were sharing not just…
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What exactly is the church? The church is not the building, even though we sometimes refer to the building as “the church.” The church is the people. But which people? The people who show up on a Sunday morning? Those who have grown up in the church and whose family attends or has attended? In…
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The Baptists came from a group that fled England because of religious conflict. Much of it (but not all) was between the Church of Rome and the Church of England. Both churches had an emphasis on the priesthood. The Baptists went in a different direction. Baptist pastors were not priests, at least not in the…
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The Baptists emerged out of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that sought to give the Bible a greater role than that of tradition. The practice of believer’s baptism is an example of this. While the earliest Christians practiced believer’s baptism, very quickly infant baptism became the accepted custom. This may have been out of fear…
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What would you tell people if they asked what Baptists believe? This is the first of a series looking at what Baptists believe. And it starts in the perfect place! The foundation of all Baptist beliefs is the short statement: “Jesus is Lord.” Baptists didn’t come up with this. This was the first creed of…
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Baptists are one among a number of movements within protestantism. But who are they and when did they start? In the 1500s, Martin Luther had made a break with the Roman Catholic Church, leading to the Protestant Reformation. At the time England was Roman Catholic. Through some circumstances, that we don’t need to go into…
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