Belief Series: Southern Baptist

Calvary Baptist Church Pastor Douglas Peirce has been in Sidney for about 22 months but has been a pastor at three other Baptist churches.

However, he began his adult life as an engineer with his own business in surveying and engineering in Indiana, “When I was 50 years old, back in 1994, the Lord spoke to my heart and told me to sell the business and go to seminary.”

Though he did not grow up Baptist it would be the foundation of his beliefs in his early adult life.

“I grew up in a very liberal denomination and I was in that church for 26 years. A neighbor of mine back in Niles, MI invited my wife and I to dinner one day and he asked if I was to die today would I go to heaven or hell. And of course I told him I would go to heaven, because I was such a good person, then he showed me through God’s word that it took a personal relationship, that you have to be what we call born again. I was 26-years-old when that happened and when I was 27 I actually started pastoring churches.

“Which is interesting because I was very dumb then and didn’t know very much.But from 1971 until 1994, God allowed me to sit under some wonderful men of God, to learn how to be a pastor. Then in 1994 he sent me off to seminary.”

Even though he hadn’t always been a Southern Calvary Baptist, saying all three churches he has resided over were Calvary Baptist, the Sidney church is his first Southern Baptist dogma.

“Though doctrine wise we are pretty much the same, there is a difference in the way the Southern Baptists are run in accordance to other churches,” he explained. “The other two churches were independent Baptist; they did not have an organization behind them, whereas the Southern Baptist does.

“In fact I am very pleased to be a southern Baptist because I have ministers and conference pastor, which we call a Dom, which supports us. If we have a problem we have someone to go to. Whereas in the independent church we are basically on our own, and don’t have a support group.”

Pastor said he found the Southern Baptist Church to be quite an interesting church in that they “run the gamut in being very traditional and conservative to being somewhat liberal, but they hold on to the baptistic beliefs.”

The pastor described the Sidney Southern Baptist Church as being a good blend, where “we use different types of music; choruses as well as the traditional” during a worship service.

He said this church falls into a happy medium within the Baptist dogma.

“When I got saved in 1971, I pastored a church for two years as an interim pastor, and then we got a full-time pastor. Then we went to an independent fundamental Baptist church for 20 years. I loved the pastor I learned an awful lot under him, but the fact is you had a book of rules. You didn’t go to movies, you didn’t do this, you wore long dresses as a woman,” he said to explain a few of the rules the very traditional Baptist church required.

Due to having children of his own and they attended the school associated with the church, the pastor said his wife and he chose not to make waves, but because neither believed in such strictness ended up leaving the church after their children graduated.

After leaving Pastor Peirce said they, “went to what I feel is more biblical Baptist church that didn’t have all those rules.

“They didn’t feel it was wrong to go to movies. Now, I don’t believe it is wrong to go to movies, but I believe it is wrong what you can see in a movie. The discernment is upon the person the individual, rather than what the pastor says.”

He claims not to be dictatorial over his congregation, rather leaving personal choices up to them when it comes to dress, time spent outside the church, movies, music and behaviors – for good reason as it is a part of their belief system.

Within the Baptist church the foundation of the beliefs sets on a shared ideology with other Christian churches, “in that we believe first of all in salvation through faith,” Pastor Peirce began.

“That is a personal belief that you need to have Jesus Christ as your personal savior. That he forgave you through the blood he shed on the cross at Calvary for your sins. And I personally believe if I were the only person in this world Jesus would have died for me, because God loved us so much.

“Secondly, we believe in the assurance of salvation, in that we like to use the phrase ‘once saved always saved.’ I like and appreciate that phrase, but feel that sometimes Christians take that phrase and use it as a crutch, in that I can do anything and God will forgive me. That is the truth but the fact is it doesn’t give you a license to sin, and many people just come to church on Sunday, but on Monday through Saturday they live like the world, and that is wrong.

Pastor Peirce said the Baptist Church also believes in baptism by complete emersion, and it is the origins for where the word Baptist derives.

To the Baptist, baptism alone does not save or guarantee salvation as some believe, something the pastor called ‘works,’ and is something that separates the meaning of baptism for Baptist to other beliefs, Pastor Peirce said.

He said they do not believe in the sprinkling of waters upon the head but rather in emersion, he said this was symbolism for being saved by way of rebirth.

When Pastor Peirce was a baby he was baptized in the faith in which he grew up in, however it was through the sprinkling of waters on his head and said “it was done to me,” so upon conversion he was re-baptized in what they believe is “a believer’s baptism”.

Pastor Peirce said an infant can’t make the decision to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior so “we don’t baptize infants, what we do is dedicate them. It’s actually a parent dedication, because we are asking the parents to raise them in the Christian church and we also charge the congregation to help raise that same child.”

The separation, he said is in the adult making the choice for them to show the world they choose Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

The reason Pastor Peirce believes in allowing his congregation the ability to choose who and what they are going to be without draping them with rules is because “the independent free will of the believer.”

“God did not make you a robot, he made you an independent thinker, and it was a gift. He gave that gift to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,” he began, “and they chose to do wrong.”

His example as to the gift of free will was about the fall of man and that the end results, like with all choices we make, have consequences.

Pastor Peirce said it was a gift, a free gift given to people by God.