Shed Purchase From Southern Baptist

Being the chairman of the property committee at church I arranged for the purchase of a new storage shed to replace our recently hail damaged one. Since I was off work today I went up to church to meet with the person delivering the shed.

After backing up his flatbed several times to drop the shed he got out of the truck and asked me if I attended this church. I knew right then I was going to catch some grief from him with his Oklahoma accent coming across really strong. When I responded "Yes" instead of " No shit Sherlock "like I wanted to, he proceeded to ask me if I knew I was saved and did I think we have to work to be saved.

I responded in the Lutheran tradition baptism is the initiation rite to the faith. He then cut me off before I could talk any further and pulled out a track showing the baptist salvation plan I had used over the years during park evangelism. I was courteous and let him finish his presentation. I asked him then what the initiation rite was for his tradition? Was it still the sinners prayer? He said no that wasn't it and all you had to was believe that Christ died for our sins and was resurrected. I give the baptist apologists kudos here for ditching the sinners prayer, maybe eventually they will ditch the age of accountability nonsense too and agree with infant baptism. Although this would steal their full immersion thunder and pull them away from their Anabaptist roots.

Our conversation continued with him going in a Calvinistic direction with lots of reference to sin and hell with many bible verses quoted verbatim. I took another tactic and responded with we can't do anything to earn God's favor and he loves us just as much when we are in grace as when we are out sinning. I also gave him a Lutheran discussion on the law and how it convicts us of our sin and if we ignore it then we lose our free will.

I wrapped my discussion up with him with when we follow Christs teachings, we do leave behind willingly our sinful ways because we see they are foolish. I also mentioned that this scenario spelled out can seem works based but really isn't.  I think at the end he might have thought that we are saved at our "liberal" Lutheran Church and I enjoyed our discussion.

I was a little irked at the time but I think I was able to show him a pre Calvin view of theology that got him to think outside of his Southern Baptist paradigm. I could have been a jerk and cut the conversation short but I am glad I stepped up to the plate and chatted with this guy.