ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN PASTORAL THEOLOGY & PRACTICE LPTP-18 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 www.captionfirst.com *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> ERIC: Thank you. As long as I'm asking such questions, are there circumstances when a pastor should advisedly refuse to baptize? >> DR. WARNECK: Eric, in answer to your question, there may be a circumstance where we would refuse to baptize. But, in all likelihood, we want to be generous with the sacrament and respond positively and actively when we are asked to administer this wonderful sacrament of God's grace and forgiveness. I would begin with the -- I would counter your question with another question in our discussion here as we get started. Is this a legitimate question that a pastor -- are there circumstances where he would refuse baptism? Is that a legitimate question? Under our Lord's mandate and also through his grace, and the power of baptism to turn souls from sin to God by union with Christ in His death and resurrection, hardly should we be refusing baptism. Withholding the sacrament is just not in the cards, so to speak. I think we have to begin right there and be very emphatic on this point. And, yet, we recognize that with Holy Baptism comes the obligation to instruct and to teach the Christian faith following administration of the sacrament. This obligation is there in the great commission itself. Our words of our Lord: "Teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you." Matthew 28, verse 20. When anxious family members press the pastor to baptize a relative who in earlier rational moments gave every indication that he or she rejected baptism or the Christian faith, that is an instance, an unusual instance, where the pastor may consider refusing the sacrament. We would not want to baptize, for instance, a person in the physical status of the persons we discussed in an earlier part of our subject. If they had been hostile to the Christian faith, we wouldn't force the sacrament on such people. Also, in circumstances when follow-up teaching is not at all in the picture, the pastor might consider refusal of baptism. But extra caution here is certainly necessary. A careful pastoral judgment is required. We should not easily refuse baptism, we say it again, lest we withhold the gifts of God from him who He would reach His Holy Spirit. Certainly we do not baptize in a vacuum. The pastor should have some assurance that under normal circumstances parents and sponsors will see that the baptized child is properly instructed at home and by the agencies of the church beginning with the cradle roll and Sunday school, later confirmation instruction and classes at the church. Sometimes the pastor lacks such assurance. The situation may be very unstable. The parents may be inactive Christians or the family life so disintegrated and unstable that continued nurture of the baptized child may to all appearances be in jeopardy. Even so, would it not be the better part of wisdom, Eric, to baptize the child and to follow up carefully so that the home is encouraged to fulfill the responsibility to teach the child? Then the church in its ministry may invoke extra resources, if needed. Better to walk with the child than to refuse baptism just because all is not favorable with respect to follow-up instruction. Eric, we disagree with pastoral practice which refuses baptism because parents have not met certain expectations or even standards in terms of their own church membership and faithfulness. Shall we deny the child because of the fault of the parents? So let us be generous with baptism. Then make every effort to continuous pastoral care so that the baptized child does receive the instruction that our Lord intended for him or her. That would seem to be a sound pastoral approach, Eric. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***