What is an Independent Baptist Church?
By Dr. B. Clayton Shumpert Baptist International Missions Inc. To some people an Independent Baptist Church is a strange phenomenon. Being accustomed to the various associational and denominational groups of Baptists, they cannot comprehend the nature of a church that is not affiliated with any of these. Surely a church that stands “all by itself” must be very strange. Actually, independent churches which have been Baptistic in doctrine have existed since apostolic times. Long before the Protestant Reformation began there were independent churches in both Europe and Asia. An Independent Baptist Church, therefore, is nothing new or novel. It has an ancient and glorious heritage. Though, in various periods of church history, members of independent churches have been persecuted and even slain for the faith, such churches continue until the present day. There are 15,000 in the U.S. alone. What are the distinctives of an Independent Baptist Church? They could concisely be set forth under fi
