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What Is A Baptist?
If asked the question, I would say….
A Baptist, being the only non-Protestant and non-catholic Christian group on the planet, above all holds the Bible alone as the sole authority to faith and practice. Baptists fought for and won by God’s grace liberty of conscience, individual soul liberty.
A Baptist’ believes the local church is autonomous, that is, independent and uncontrolled by others.
Baptists are Great Commission-minded and missions enthusiast. He is a missionary.
Baptists are indigenous church-planters.
Baptists hold to the priesthood of every believer.
There are two ordinances – Baptism by immersion and the Lord’s Supper.
A Baptist is one who insist on a regenerate membership and that the local church exist to train regenerate members in righteousness and instruct them in carrying out the Great Commission. As it has been said, we gather to worship, we scatter to witness.
Baptists believe there are only two officers within the Church fellowship, the Pastor-teacher and the Deacon. All other offices are men attempting to change Biblical mandates.
Baptists, while not shying away from participating in government on every level, certainly hold to the separation of Church and State.
Baptists are separatists and non-ecumenical.
Here is my own acrostic for what a Baptist is:
B – Biblical authority alone for faith and practice, autonomy (self-rule).
A – Anti-Arminian, anti-dispensational, wholly old Calvinistic doctrines of grace.
P – Priesthood of the Believer.
T – Two ordinances (baptism of believers only by immersion and the Lord’s Supper) and two local church officers, the Pastor-teacher and the Deacon.
I – Individual soul-liberty, liberty of conscience, and liberty to forcefully enforce liberty – with guns if necessary!
S – Saved and evidentially so, baptized by immersion (all-the-way-under) membership in accordance to God’s Word.
T – Totally separate in local worship from any who rejects the above.
5 Pt. Salt 
pretty straight forward – wish they new how to love like Jesus
A VERY cool acrostic! I copied it for future use.
evanlarr – you wish Baptists (k)new how to love like Jesus? Ya lost me…
Excellent, Thank you Brother Taylor. Most of us need be reminded often what we hold, I feel I must be retrained daily sometimes. I would like to add to your lesson a similar lesson by a baptist from long ago. After your piece I went back and reread his . And I believe I shall read and try better to obey his advice.
http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/broadus.bapt.distinctives.html
Upon re-reading, I found what I thought to be one little mistake. You wrote:
“A Baptist, being the only non-Protestant and non-catholic group on the planet, above all holds the Bible alone as the sole authority to faith and practice”
I think the Greek and Russian Orthodox might take issue with that (meaning of course the first half of the above sentence). The many cults (JW’s, Mormons, etc) would as well..though who cares, I suppose. Certainly the anabaptists considered themelves no part of either, but it would be a stretch to consider many of those anabaptist groups as “Baptist” in any modern sense.
That being said, you don’t have to be a Landmarker to recognize the unique standing of Baptists, or to recognize that they are not a reformation produced people. I do believe Baptists at their best most accurately represent NT Christianity.
Perhaps I should have written: “A Baptist, being the only non-Protestant and non-catholic Christian group on the planet…” Then of course, that would exclude the JW’s, Mormons, Greek and Russian orthodox, wouldn’t it? 🙂
Indeed it would.