J. Elton Kolb is a pastor, counselor, international speaker, and leadership mentor. He has MDiv and DMin degrees and has served for more than 25 years of ministry as a missionary, pastor, and counselor. Dr. Kolb is passionate about missions, leadership, and helping people grow in Christ.

www.jeltonkolb.com

Facebook and Instagram: @‌jeltonkolb

Welcome to 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Good morning Pastor Kulb.

Praise God for you.

Praise the Lord, I'm doing well.

It's good to meet with you.

What part of the world are you in for those listening?

So I am in southeastern Pennsylvania.

I'm between the historic city of Philadelphia and the Amish country.

Right in between those two things.

Were you born in that area?

I was.

I was born in that area, grew up the son of a Mennonite dairy farmer.

Wow.

And how did you come to meet Jesus?

I'm the youngest of seven children and I would sometimes declare that I was running away and I would go down into the woods and I would pray and I would talk with God and I had learned that you can talk with God like he's right there with you.

But in my childlike faith, I heard God talking to me.

And so I would have these conversations with God just walking in the woods.

That was some of my earliest recollections.

What do you think of the passages that talk about God's first encounter with man in terms of having those conversations and walking in the cool of the day and talking with man?

I can relate to that.

Walking through the woods, pouring my heart out to God.

God spoke to me, at one point said to me, Joel, remember what you look like because when I get done with you, you're not going to recognize yourself.

And he gave me a vision of a man at a pulpit.

And I didn't realize until I was much older that that man was me.

I just thought it was a nice image.

But then God showed me later on in my life.

One day I looked in the mirror and it's like, whoa, I am that man.

That's amazing.

So tell me about who surrounds you.

You talked about your family in terms of you being the youngest of seven.

What does your family look like today?

I was youngest of seven children.

So the story goes like this.

My mother had five children in six years.

And then the doctor said to her, Mrs. Kolb, you probably shouldn't have any more children.

It could be detrimental to your health.

And two years later, my sister was born.

And then the doctor said, Mrs. Kolb, I don't think you need to worry.

I don't think you could have any more children if you wanted to.

And four years later, I was born.

Do you have a big family today or did you decide to take it smaller?

No, I have four children.

There are two boys, two girls.

They're grown.

And I'm a grandpa now.

I have three granddaughters.

Congratulations.

So yes, the family's growing and God is faithful.

I'm thrilled.

You know, all four children love the Lord.

Yeah, that's an important marker of your success in the kingdom.

So when did baptism in your journey occur?

So because I gave my life to the Lord at a very young age, I remember first asking around the age of seven if I could be baptized.

If you know anything about the Mennonite history, they are the ones who first, after the Reformation, began promoting adult baptism.

They were called Anabaptists, or again baptized.

And so the idea of baptizing a seven-year-old to them sounded too much like infant baptism.

You know, they would say, oh, well, you can't really know what it is you're doing.

And I'm thinking to myself, I don't know what there is to know, but I think I know perfectly well what I'm doing.

You know, I'm walking and talking with God.

What else is there?

Yeah, so that was part of my experience.

And then later on when I went to Bible school, I went to a Pentecostal Bible school, and I attended a Baptist church when I was there.

They wanted me to be rebaptized because they said the Mennonites had not baptized me the right way, because I was baptized at the age of 12.

That's something we did in the Mennonite Church around the age of puberty.

You know, you were all kind of herded together, and that's when you were baptized.

And so I was baptized by sprinkling at the age of 12, and the Baptist said I didn't do it right.

So they wanted me to be rebaptized to be able to join their church.

So it's been a theme throughout my life.

I've had these experiences that have made me really curious about baptism.

You know, what is it?

How does this work?

What's the real meaning?

Because different people preferred different explanations.

And so that's what led me to this study.

What did you come up with?

It started when I first became a pastor.

The senior pastor, he gave me a list of scriptures, and he said, I want you to instruct the people who are going to be baptized.

Lead a baptism class.

And I looked at his list of verses, and I'm like, I need something clearer than this.

So I did my own study, and I came up with, at that time, seven biblical images, seven biblical metaphors.

We call them in academic circles.

I put together a workbook that I was using to instruct baptismal candidates.

And then a couple of my fellow pastors got a hold of that workbook, and they were using it too.

And then one of them, in 2017, offered to publish it for me.

So I published Believer's Baptism, the 2017 version.

It included the workbook.

It included my story.

It included an essay that I did for my master's degree on baptism.

And I was never really satisfied with it.

So when I went to do my doctoral studies, I told the director of the program, I have a book that I published on baptism, but I've never really been satisfied with it.

I would really like to do an even deeper dive and work on it.

And she said, that's it.

That's your project.

So I made it my project, and I focused on the seven biblical metaphors, the seven biblical images.

So through the book, I take a different images as your primary image, as your primary metaphor.

And depending on which one you think is most important, you get a very different view of baptism.

What have you found people are connecting with the most of the seven metaphors?

Well, in the Protestant church, the dying and rising again metaphor.

That's what, for many people, their primary metaphor.

But historically in the church, through much of the church age, it has been a rite of initiation, being brought into the body of Christ.

And that right there is the whole infant versus adult baptism argument.

Which of those metaphors is your primary metaphor?

Today, would you baptize a seven year old?

Oh, absolutely.

When people come to me and say, I would like my child to be baptized, here's my question for them.

Was this the child's initiative?

Or is this your initiative?

If it's the child's initiative, I have no problem with it.

If it's the parent's initiative, well, then that's a different conversation.

We need to talk a little bit more with the child and find out what they want.

My six year old son told me that he wanted to be baptized.

So what is the process you would take him through?

Is he going through the same classes as the others?

I would give the parents my first book, or actually the workbook is in the appendix of my new book as well.

I would give them the workbook and say, here, work through this with your child.

And then all I want to do is I just want to sit down with the child and I want to hear their affirmation.

You know, why do you want to be baptized?

What are your reasons?

And if the parent has already worked through it with them, they should be able to articulate that.

What accounts for the calmness and what sounds to me as a huge amount of generosity that comes from you in this lifetime?

Yeah, I think it's walking and talking with God.

I've spent much of my adult life trying to get back to that simplicity.

Life gets complicated and it's so easy to lose touch of that simple childlike faith.

That's really what drives me.

What motivates me is that simple relationship with God.

And even in studies that are complex like baptism, my goal was to try to keep it simple.

Of course, I have footnotes.

I dive into the complexities.

There's lots of different authors cited.

Many of them disagree with one another.

But when it comes right down to it, the thing that brings all of those images together is that all of them give a well-rounded view of spiritual formation.

We are being formed in the image of Christ.

And that, regardless of which metaphor is your primary, that is the meaning of baptism.

Pastor Kolb, this was a great pleasure, one I treasure.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share with our amazing audience?

Just to thank you for the opportunity to share.

I want to glorify God with everything that I do, and I'm just happy for the opportunity to serve.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

Amazing audience, the book mentioned will be available in the links of the show notes.

Again, a pleasure, I treasure.

Thank you for being on What Is Inspired by 12 Mile Converse.