Dr Paul Allen

I was baptized before conversion. Should I be baptized again after coming to faith? No one is ever required to be baptized again. Baptism, by its very nature, can only happen once. Now, of course, the people who want to baptize you after you come to faith don’t believe you’ve really been baptized before. They would say that they are not promoting being baptized again; they are promoting being baptized, properly, once. There are some groups who actually do talk about being baptized again, but that is to misunderstand the fundamental nature of baptism. Baptism is a sacrament that speaks of the reality that the Christian life has a beginning. You pass from death to life. You pass from unbelief to faith. The sacrament of baptism marks that reality in a profound way for the Christian. To say you could be baptized over and over again would implicitly say that you could pass from death to life over and over again, which is not at all what we believe. So, the singularity of baptism as the sacr...

Image via Wikipedia What is the minimum age?  Though by definition baptists agree that a person should be baptized only after confessing faith in Jesus Christ , there are several views on how old a believer must be, or should be, before such a confession can be trusted and acted upon. The views range, on the one end, from baptizing a confessing believer no matter how young to, on the other end, not baptizing them until they are practically independent from their parents. I’ve linked to statements from solid churches that stand on opposite ends of this spectrum and to two other notable churches that fall more in the middle. There’s a summary of each view under the church’s name; you’ll want to follow the link to read more of their rationale. “Any Age” View Heritage Baptist Church , written by pastor Ted Christman: For more than thirty years Heritage Baptist Church has been baptizing only those who give credible evidence of true conversion. There is not...

Image via Wikipedia WASHINGTON, DC , December 15, 2011 ( LifeSiteNews.com ) - A  report  published yesterday by the Pew Research Center says that only 51% of adults in the United States are currently married. Compared to 1960 when 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married, this represents a new low for the U.S., and, according to the report, is representative of most other “advanced post-industrial societies .” “If current trends continue,” senior writer D’Vera Cohn advises, “the share of adults who are currently married will drop to below half within a few years. Other adult living arrangements—including cohabitation, single-person households and single parenthood —have all grown more prevalent in recent decades.” The report also reveals that the number of adults who have never married has almost doubled, from 15% to 28%, since 1960, and that the median age at first marriage has risen from 20.3 to 26.5 for women, and from 22.8 to 28.7 for men. Image by mary hodder ...

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia The Barna Group team spent much of the last five years exploring the lives of young people who drop out of church. The research provides many insights into the spiritual journeys of teens and young adults. The findings are revealed extensively in a new book called,  You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith . The research uncovered five myths and realities about today's young dropouts. Myth 1: Most people lose their faith when they leave high school . Reality: There has been considerable attention paid to the so-called loss of faith that happens between high school and early adulthood . Some have estimated this dropout in alarming terms, estimating that a large majority of young Christians will lose their faith. The reality is more nuanced. In general, there are three ...