As sessions shepherd their flocks, they are faced with issues which require wisdom in a myriad of situations. Congregations ought to pray for sessions as they navigate these shepherding challenges. This article addresses a single issue which was dealt with at our recent General Assembly.

Specific Backstory of This Article

At the Ninetieth General Assembly (GA) the issue of whether it is within a session’s powers to make a rule excluding Baptist parents with unbaptized children from membership in a congregation was considered. The same session would admit into membership a Baptist couple with no children. The reason the session denies membership is not the lack of belief in infant baptism but the refusal to submit their children for baptism. On a narrow 63–61 vote, the Assembly agreed, apparently not necessarily with the session's reason for denying Baptists membership, but with it being within the powers of a session to make this rule. This observer respectfully submits that GA decided the issue incorrectly, in a way that will damage our church practice and theology. One possible contributor to the decision may have been limited consideration time.

The total time for consideration of this issue was only seventy-five minutes, including the GA’s fifteen minutes of floor debate. It is, in this visitor’s observation, the pressure of time that short-circuited the hearing of one another and curtailed a debate which impacts both our practice and theology. In light of the closeness of the vote and the limitations in debate, this article seeks to assist the church by continuing the discussion, elaborating briefly on the concerns of this observer. Fifteen minutes did not give the 124 voting commissioners much time to speak; a number were seeking the floor when debate ended, even though a motion to extend the time of debate was defeated.

Forgotten Unbaptized Covenant Children

Children of believers are children of the covenant, even if they remain unbaptized. Our Sunday bulletins occasionally request prayer for mothers pregnant with covenant children or announce the birth of a covenant child. These announcements are part and parcel of the communion of saints and are occasions of celebration of covenant life among God’s covenant people.

My wife and I have lost two grandchildren at birth, before they could be presented for baptism by their Presbyterian parents. We rejoice in the comfort of God’s covenantal faithfulness to the babies, their parents, siblings, and ourselves. We believe that Daniel Mark and Haley Renee Jerrell, as covenant babies, are under the eternal shepherding care of the Savior. They are holy in the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 7:14).

The OPC’s first baptismal vow for the parents on the occasion of an infant baptism has two parts: sin and covenant of grace. The second part of the vow includes the teaching that children of believing parents are covenant children even before their baptism. This truth is important. Listen to yourself as you read and answer this vow:

Do you acknowledge that although our children are conceived and born in sin and therefore are subject to condemnation, they are holy in Christ by virtue of the covenant of grace, and as children of the covenant are to be baptized?

The doctrine of the covenant is biblical—it is true, whether or not our Baptist brothers and sisters yet realize it. By keeping a Baptist couple out of the church, we subtly focus on “the promise is for you. . . .” rather than furthering the biblical point, “. . . the promise is for you and yours.” Is keeping a Baptist couple with unbaptized kids out of the church not a failure to acknowledge not only credible professions of faith by the parents but also keeping covenant children further from the church? Is it not a better fix in keeping with our theology to be predisposed towards receiving the couple with a credible profession of faith (in spite of their covenant children being unbaptized) because we confess the first baptismal vow’s theology, and embrace these children as what they indeed are—unbaptized covenant children? By keeping covenant children at arm’s length and distant from both pastoral care and the church’s ministry of Word and prayer, are we not in some measure robbing these youth of their status as children of the covenant? While the parents fail to see them as we do, are we being consistent with covenant theology? Should not we acknowledge them as holy in Christ and receive their parents?

The Bible says children of believing parents are holy in the Lord (1 Cor. 7:14). The holiness spoken of here is not some generalized view of holiness, not some nebulous idea of suspension between heaven and hell, not even common grace. No, it is a reference to the children of believing parents being covenant children. Notice there is no reference to baptism in this passage, although it does provide grounds for infant baptism. What a glorious benefit of God to believing parents! Your children are joined in covenant holiness with them—the promise is for you and yours—and we want our Baptist brothers and sisters to recognize that!

A Great Sin

Yes, it is a great sin to condemn or neglect baptism, as our Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 28.5 points out faithfully. At the same time, the main thought of WCF 28.5 is that “grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it; or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.”

While the main thought of this section fends off baptismal regeneration, it wisely reminds us that the sign and seal of the covenant is not to be ignored. It is not necessary to conclude that Baptist parents today are condemning or neglecting the godly training of their children. While they interpret certain Scriptures differently, and we believe erroneously, yet in a wonderful way, many Baptists today are inconsistent with their views as they rear their children, discipling them with the means of grace. Many Baptists today, particularly Calvinistic Baptists, breathe a very different attitude than the Anabaptists of the time of the Reformation. Some Baptist parents are better at raising children covenantally than some Presbyterian parents with baptized children. They teach their offspring the Word and pray with them. They bring the children to church week by week. They teach them to sing “Jesus Loves Me.” Their sin in failing to understand properly one part of the means of grace neither eliminates the means of grace nor the covenant of grace. A session should always remember and keep their practice in line with the fact that yet-unbaptized covenant children are covenant children whether the believing parents recognize that or not. While only believing parents may present their children for baptism, a session should not automatically, by a fixed rule, move the children further from the communion of saints by not allowing the believing parents to be members. The church is the context for sanctification of faith and life!

OPC Changes in Membership Since 1966

Our ecumenical understanding and commitments have brought some refinements in our view of membership in a church world quite different from the days of the Reformation. All interchurch relationships are not equal when it comes to faith and life. The rise of NAPARC specifically called for recognizing churches of like faith and practice. In view of this, the 1983 revisions to the Book of Discipline included a new and additional category of membership transfer. OPC members transferring from one OPC to another without qualification (cf. Book of Discipline (BD) II.B.2.a) is different from transfers from churches of like faith and practice to the OPC (cf. BD II.B.2.a with b). When people come to us seeking membership from churches other than OPC and those of like faith and practice, they come to us under the third category of reaffirmation of faith (cf. BD II.B.2.c). Under reaffirmation we receive church members from different denominations, i.e. Assemblies of God, Southern Baptist, etc. These changes spell out membership issues not in view in the 1966 GA report on receiving Baptists. The 1983 revisions on receiving members more clearly articulated the terms on which sessions receive and dismiss members.

In 1983 a definition for a credible profession of faith was added to the BD II.B.2.b.c and d as follows:

The session . . . shall . . . assure itself so far as possible that he [the candidate for membership] possesses the knowledge requisite for active faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, relies for salvation on the work of Christ alone, is trusting Christ for salvation, and is determined by the grace of God to lead a Christian life.

The DPW 4.A.3 includes,

In order for the session to assure itself so far as possible that the candidate makes a credible profession, it shall examine him to ascertain that he possesses the doctrinal knowledge requisite for saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, relies on the merits of Christ alone, and is determined by the grace of God to lead a Christian life.”

Because it is a constitutional provision, sessions are not free to modify the definition.

Our membership vows are to be understood in terms of a credible profession of faith, not vice versa. As the late missionary and pastor Francis Mahaffy once said, “We tend to require too much prior to a public profession of faith, and too little afterwards.”

A Fracture in Our Practice of Unity

The transfer of members between OP churches is most certainly a highly and faithfully recognized practice in our constitution and among us. We have within the OPC a strong sense of one Lord, one faith, one baptism. We see ourselves as covenantally bound together. Our unity in the faith is highly cherished, and it creates an equilibrium of confidence and trust from session to session, congregation to congregation. A tough question that presents a danger, even a fracture, to our unity revolves around the issue of receiving church members with unbaptized covenant children. The question is as follows: When a family with yet unbaptized children who are members of one OP congregation seek transfer to another OP, and that congregation’s session has a rule that families with unbaptized children may not be received, what happens to that family? Will they be received or will they be compelled to seek a non-OP church? Will the receiving session honor that letter of transfer? Can they uphold the decision of the other session by receiving this family? The receiving session is now faced with the question of challenging the decision and wisdom of another session. Complicating matters and to be consistent, what if the receiving session thinks it must follow its own adopted rule and reject this transfer of members? And then we ask, is the rejection 1) of an OP session’s letter of transfer, 2) of a couple with a credible profession of faith, 3) who have unbaptized covenant children, too high a price to pay to preserve this local session’s adopted and fixed rule? Has an addition been made to our Reformed distinctives, creating a new barrier within the OPC between one congregation and its sister congregations?

The Dividing Line

The fourth way of receiving members into the church is by confession of faith (cf. BD II.B.2.d). This category is used for people who have come to faith and do not come to us from another church because they are coming to the church from the world. A credible profession of faith is the standard that spells out the terms of recognizing the new Christian’s eligibility for baptism and placement of their names upon the roll of the church as communicant members.

It is crucial to maintain the distinction between the church and the world. The keys of the kingdom signify the power of inclusion in and exclusion from the church. Our membership vows do not exist to promulgate denominational distinctives but to guard the grand barrier, the dividing line between the church and the world.

The session is under confessional obligation to see that each family that comes to them are included among the people of God in the church visible, in a local congregation, always remembering: “. . . the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (WCF 25.2). Turning a couple away from the church, leaving a couple outside the church is dramatically damaging. Is it not essentially abandoning them to the world and leaving them to the reign of sin and Satan? Is not keeping the parents out also keeping the unbaptized children further from covenant blessing? Do not forget “the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.”

Reasons for Denying Baptists Membership

If a Baptist couple applying for membership in an OPC congregation is unteachable, unwilling to continue to search the Scriptures on the topic of the sacraments, or if they are causing dissension in the church when the sacrament is administered, the session is on good grounds in not receiving such a couple into membership. But the issue is not only their incorrect view of baptism, it is their attitude towards the body of Christ and its unity and peace. But such decisions are best made on a case by case basis, not because of a seemingly inflexible rule determined in advance. The General Assembly in the past has properly respected the right of sessions to exercise godly wisdom in such matters.

Wrapping it Up

The heart of the issue is our treatment of covenant children before their baptism. Covenant children, including unbaptized covenant children, should not be hindered in coming unto the Lord in his church. They should be loved, nurtured, and fully embraced. They should be taught to sing, pray, and hear the Word read and preached in churches that do not consider them as heathen. It should thrill us when Baptist parents want to raise their unbaptized children in a covenantally biblical church.

A wider ranging observation comes from the late Rev. Roger Gibbons, who came to the Reformed faith from a Baptist background. I recall conversations in which he would remind presbyters of how difficult it is for Baptists who become persuaded of the covenant—immersion and adult-only baptism have been so deeply ingrained in them that emotional attachments can linger. It is a stark reminder that we who believe in the reformed teaching of the covenant may have come by those views over years of study.

Discussions on the covenant are a significant part of our own OPC history, given the writings of Geerhardus Vos, Edward Young, John Murray, Norman Shepherd, Meredith G. Kline, and Richard Gaffin, Jr. We continue to grow. It is humbling to be reminded of a comment attributed to Charles Hodge to the effect that the doctrine of the covenants is the unfinished business of the Reformation. We should not expect a Baptist couple with unbaptized children to resolve fully these continuing discussions before being received into an OP congregation, nor should they be unduly pressured after they are received while they continue to grow. What we should do is to include them in our journey of studying the Word of God. Some have said “the covenant is more caught than taught.” Part of it is living in a church that appreciates this covenantal journey by way of the cross.

Glenn D. Jerrell is a retired minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church residing in Knoxville, Tennessee. Ordained Servant Online, February, 2025.