After baptism, the first communion is a further step towards full acceptance into the community of believers. Then the believer is a full member of the religious community, endowed with all rights and duties. To be confirmed, you have to be at least 15 years old because this sacrament requires a certain level of maturity. The Baptist faith first developed in England and America. Baptists are Protestant Christians. Baptists are a community of Christians. They belong to the Federation of Evangelical Free Churches.
The Bible is also the Word of God for Baptists. But there are differences between the Catholic and Evangelical churches. A worldwide Baptist creed does not exist, but there is great agreement on the following principles:. The proclamation awakens, strengthens and corrects the faith of the individual and demands their answer. Preaching the gospel is a prerequisite for people to believe. Those who have come to believe in Jesus Christ are invited to be baptized based on their personal confession.
It delegates this task to individual community members. All acts, including baptism, sacrament and sermon, can in principle be carried out by any member of the congregation.
Johann Gerhard Oncken and the church and its regional and national associations. State and church must be separated. Baptism is an initial profession of faith, and the Lord's Table Communion is an ongoing, continual, and repeated renewal of faith.
Communion is also something of a pledge of renewed trust in Christ and obedience to him which is one reason why Paul warns against eating or drinking unworthily in 1 Corinthians But it would be pretense for someone to take communion when they have not even taken the first step of obedience to Jesus in baptism. Then there's also the biblical pattern. The sequence is always baptism first, followed by communion. So in Acts 2 , for example, it is only those who are baptized and added to the church in verse 41 who then participate in the breaking of bread in verse In 1 Corinthians, when Paul talks at length about communion in chapter 11 , the assumption from earlier in the letter chapter 1 is that he is writing to baptized Christians.
There are no examples in Acts or the Epistles of unbaptized people taking communion. Add to this the witness of the church through the ages. While historical creeds and confessions don't settle the matter Scripture does that! And from what I can tell, the majority of churches have either taught or assumed that baptism should precede communion.
Of course, there are significant disagreements about the mode and timing of baptism — but almost all agree that baptism, however it is understood, must come first.
Stating it this way is helpful for a couple reasons. Of course, being baptized itself doesn't make someone a Christian or necessarily prove they are. Baptism is a symbolic action that signifies the new life God gives us as we join the church community.
Baptism uses water as a symbolic cleansing that signifies the acceptance of new life within the church family. The sacrament of baptism is the single rite of initiation into the Christian community, the church. The United Church offers baptism to all ages. We believe the gift of God's love doesn't depend on our ability to understand it, so we baptize people as infants right up through adulthood. With children, instruction is given to parents or sponsors to equip them for the child's Christian nurture.
During the ceremony, which usually takes place as part of a regular worship service, everyone in the congregation pledges support for the child and their parents. If you are seeking baptism for yourself or your child, please speak to your minister or contact a United Church near you.
Baptism is not a requirement for God's love.
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