BLOESCH ON BAPTISM
Sometimes I think this guy has somehow tapped into my brain (although he says what I think a whole lot better than I could ever say it – and I do occasionally disagree with him – but not here). For example:

My recommendation is that both sides in this dispute [Baptists vs. Infant baptizers] respect the integrity of the other side and also accept the baptism of the other side, so long as it is performed in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and in the context of the community of faith. Against those who defend pedobaptism [that is the baptism of infants], I contend that baptism is ineffectual apart from personal faith and that it is not complete until the dawning of faith. Against those who champion believers’ baptism, I am firmly convinced that there should be no rebaptism. I also believe that baptism should be seen as sacramental and should take place in a service of worship where the Word of God is read and proclaimed.

Regarding mode of baptism, I support pouring over both immersion and sprinkling, simply because the symbolism of baptism as the pouring out of the Spirit is more fully preserved. Yet I fully accept the legitimacy of the other modes of baptism. When baptism is applied to children, a strong rite of confirmation is necessitated in order to underline the importance of personal decision for salvation. Confirmation presupposes conversion and does not itself create conversion, as in a fully sacramentalist view.

Because pedobaptism today has virtually become a means of cheap grace, I personally favor the rite of believer’s baptism but always interpreted in a sacramental way, as a means of grace. When baptism is given to believers, it does not impart salvation but confirms and ratifies a salvation already set in motion by the experience of conversion. Congregationalist theologian Daniel Jenkins has voiced the complaint that infant baptism has become in too many circles a celebration of natural birth rather than of the new birth. This need not be if confirmation would again be elevated – not as a sacrament but as a sacramental ordinance in which the laity are ordained into active service in Christ’s kingdom. Baptism itself becomes a rite of ordination of the laity when it is applied to believers.

Donald Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission (IVP, 2002) pp. 158-159.

I used to hold an even stronger believer’s baptism position until I lived near so many Baptists in Texas (Where the Baptist Church IS the de facto state church). There I saw how even “believers’ baptism” has become a form of cheap grace – a cultural expectation that one will go forward, “get saved”, and get baptized – sometime in the teen years. And once this is accomplished a person can move on to the next phase of life – confident that he or she has the God thing covered.