WHY I AM A BAPTIST

The Baptists did not claim to have reestablished Christ's church, but instead saw themselves as continuing the process of reforming the church through the establishment of true and godly congregations of visible saints-each entering into the covenant fellowship of the congregation by personal testimony of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and personal commitment to obey Christ in baptism and faithful discipleship. When Baptist churches come together, as Southern Baptists in the United States did in 1845, they establish mission boards and organize evangelism before doing anything else. The Southern Baptists did not establish a theological seminary until 1859 or a publishing house until 1891, but they did not leave their first meeting without establishing mission boards. Jesus Christ hath here on earth a [manifestation of his] spiritual kingdom, which is his Church, whom he hath purchased and redeemed to himself as a peculiar inheritance; which Church is a company of visible saints, called and separated from the world by the word and Spirit of God, to the visible profession of the faith of the gospel, being baptized into that faith, and joined to the Lord, and to each other, by mutual agreement in the practical enjoyment of the ordinances commanded by Christ their head and king.