I’ve mentioned in another comment that I’m currently serving in some small UMC congregations, but I am ordained in and have standing with the Disciples. That and the fact that no one has answered in the last week has prompted me to reply.

Warning, though–Restoration churches are wildly independent from one another even within their respective branches, so all I can really do is reflect on my own practices and those of the DoC churches I’ve served. With that in mind, in my churches the procession of sweet children into the baptistry on Easter was not so much the goal as the opportunity. Pastor’s Class was designed to end around Holy Week, providing some additional rhetorical weight towards a decision–what better way to celebrate than to join the Savior in death, burial, and resurrection? (And this was not necessarily a group thing! My classes tended to have adults as well as junior high students, and there was always somebody taking the class a second or even a third time. Peer pressure was never the issue–but PARENT pressure often was!)

In the churches I served, the custom was rather that if anyone made a profession of faith, the baptistry was ready next Sunday. Even if this was in the middle of the class. Even if the profession was made privately to me on Saturday night. We brooked as little delay as possible, and my lay elders were clear that the possibility of tragedy was the reason.

It’s a slightly different branch, so I’m not quite sure where the CofC is at the moment on this theological and (they would shudder at me using the word, but it’s still applicable) liturgical point. But what should come across in your conversation is Brother Gatewood’s deep concern for *you.* That’s the mark of pastoral urgency! Okay, so it’s true that he was using some rhetorical pathos on you to persuade you to act with immediacy–as I was with using Easter on my class. But I have no doubt that his words rose out of his looking at you and seeing a child of God, for whom Christ died, and worrying that the opportunity to respond to that deep love might be missed.

I’m not sure this answered your question. But I hope it came close.

The question about people like her is interesting because it really goes to the heart of the matter: is baptism about us and our human capacities? (categories like “understanding it” “making it meaningful”) or is it about grace? Of course you can tell that I’m pushing for the latter.

slightly off topic and not to set off a different discussion but to satisfy my curiosity:

My exposure to RM has been CoC exclusively, here in Austria. Out of curiosity shortly afte my conversion I answered a newspaper ad offering English language Bible study as a way of learning the language. Went and met with Otis Gatewood, veteran CoC missionary to central and eastern Europe, and was very impressed by the concern and conviction he expessed thar if I walked out of his office and across the street, if I should be hit by a car and die, I would be lost because I hadn’t been baptized.

In view of this conviction how can RM churches wait till Easter Sunday to baptize people who might after all die while waiting? Or wait till a child reaches a certain age once that child gives evidence of accountability, when that child might die waiting for that age?

Or is that strong conviction of the necessity of baptism limited to CoC and not shared by other RM churches?

Another way to put it is that by so strongly limiting Himself, the Son of God chose to become severely disabled (in comparison to his Godly attributes) in order to bring about our salvation. The Incarnation was the omnipresent and omnipotent God throwing much of that aside in order to save us. If such a severely disabled Person of the Trinity can be baptized by Saint John the Baptist, can we not also baptize those who are severely disabled?