"Pastors" Breakfast

This morning E.L. & I went to a "Pastors Appreciation Breakfast" at Warwick River Christian (Mennonite) School. We have some young folks from church who are students there. We had some good grub, good conversation and a nice concise program. Then we were supposed to be taken to see the OCC students in their classes. So far so good except the first class we go to has none of our students. It's apparently a Bible doctrine type of a class & on the board is this question: "What does your church believe about baptism?" I quickly point this out to E.L. What happens next is very cool. The teacher then asks if we have some time because she wants our participation! We are also joined by a young presbyterian preacher guy who gives his take on baptism = infant baptism...covenantal...like OT circumcision...etc. We were asked about the mode of baptism first. We went Greek & Romans 6, etc. Then we were asked about the purpose for baptism. Now the teacher was nice, but she was obviously holding to a typical baptist "outward symbol" understanding of baptism. We were diplomatic and pointed the class to the Scriptures repeatedly describing the reality of baptism in the NT. Anyway, my favorite part was when E.L. siad "We believe baptism is essential for salvation." He then dropped Acts 2:38 on them. It was especially great because the teacher had been laboring to show that baptism had nothing to with salvation. This was all very unexpected and very cool and a tremndous start to the day! Their next subject is going to be Communion. I'd love to be there for that one too!