Baptist Roots

I have been raised my entire life in a Southern Baptist church. If someone asked me what happens on a Sunday or Wednesday, I could almost show immediately from muscle memory. If asked about the Baptist doctrine, before this week- I would have given extremely vague answer. I may have responded with something like,"we believe that Jesus is Lord...and you need to be baptized to become a member.."
It was honestly humiliated sitting in class at a baptist university, not able to scratch the surface of our doctrine. As we were exploring the history of the Baptist Church, I found two things that majorly reshaped my understanding of Baptist doctrine; and have strangely created a new excitement for the Baptist faith.

1. The Baptist Church was birthed through a desire for religious freedom.

In the 1600's when the Roman Catholic Church was persecuting those who did not agree with their doctrine- John Smyth and Thomas Helwys said 'wait...we have read the bible. We should be free to practice our beliefs as we understand them.' They were a huge part of the fight for religious freedom and even wrote the first letter to argue for religious freedom. It's important to know today that our Baptist faith is deeply rooted in a personal understanding of God's word-rather than just merely believing and practicing the ways of other believers. It is so important that the church today still urges the importance of a personal understanding of God's word-through individual study.

2. Baptist are mission minded

In the early 1700's the First National Baptist Convention was formed soley to help with international missions. Johann Gerhard Oncken, a leader of convention- said that, "every Baptist is a missionary."  Our Baptist roots are also strongly founded on the mission of God- to the ends of the earth. It is important to claim the same passion that early Baptist had towards taking the good news to all people.