Teaching the Baptist distinctives will not answer all of our questions or solve all of our problems; it just points us in the right direction. Teaching the Baptist distinctives is a way to summarize New Testament teaching about the church, and a way to develop these ideas into a theology that helps us understand how the church works. With this goal in mind, I’ve become more convinced than ever that the B-A-P-T-I-S-T acrostic is harmful rather than helpful in discussing Baptist distinctives.

On the surface, the acrostic doesn’t seem to include one of our important distinctives. I’m aware of a situation where a church changed its form of government from congregational to elder rule. The pastor sent a challenging letter to the state association, saying congregational church government is unbiblical. This pastor further claimed that our fellowship must not believe in congregational government because there’s no “C” in the B-A-P-T-I-S-T acrostic. Apparently someone actually took the B-A-P-T-I-S-T acrostic as the official definition of the Baptist distinctives, and not simply a handy artificial memory device! Even so, I think it is fair to question a memory device that does not include one of our core ideas—congregational government.

(From “Where’s the ‘C’ in the Baptist Distinctives?” by Colin Smith, PhD, Cornell University)