That's Not Why You Were Baptized - The Problem of Authority

I've worked at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) for a long time. There we help missionaries learn how to help others come unto Christ through baptism. We teach them how to help others overcome their concerns and make commitments to follow Christ. We as teachers often would role play as investigators to give the missionaries practice opportunities. We would pretend to be investigators with concerns, challenges, and questions, and then the missionaries would have to help us work through those and lead us to baptism. The last thing Christ commissioned to his apostles before he left was to go forth and baptize. This is still the commission to His missionaries today, and is something we stress in the MTC. Missionaries in the MTC will often extend an invitation to be baptized in the first meeting. The most common response to this invitation (at least from christians) is that he or she is already baptized. Almost without fail, the response to this by the missionaries to the investigator involves telling them in some way or another that their baptism was not performed by the proper authority, and that baptism has to be done by the proper authority to be valid. What the missionaries are teaching is absolutely true (that in order to enter into the Celestial Kingdom of God, one has to be baptized by the proper authority), but it drives me crazy that that is always our response to that issue, and I think that there are so many better responses to this issue (I don't want anyone to confuse my point. I absolutely believe that proper authority is essential to baptism, and that our church is the only church with that authority. I just think there are so many other things associated with baptism that are more worth focusing on). First off, how many of you were baptized because you had a burning testimony that whoever was baptizing you had proper authority. You may have known or understood that they had the proper authority, but I doubt that is why you were baptized. You were baptized probably because you believed that this church was true and you wanted to be baptized a member of it, or you believed on the testimony of your parents. The thing is, most of us got baptized because we wanted to join ourselves to the Church (which is one important main purpose of baptism), and receive all the myriad of blessings associated with membership in this church, not because you wanted to be baptized by proper authority.

I think the issue stems from the era in which the Church was founded. At the time, Catholicism was no longer THE authority in Christianity. For so long the Catholic Church had claim to proper priesthood authority, and then with the fall (in some sense) of the Catholic Church, and the rise of so many other Christian churches, there was a real dilemma pertaining to authority.  Then came the Restoration and the restoration of authority. If you read the accounts of many of the early missionaries for the Church you will read that their main selling point was not the Book of Mormon, but rather restored priesthood authority. That makes perfect sense, because that is what the people were looking for. You hear stories of people like Wilford Woodruff who searched diligently for a church with proper priesthood authority to baptize. Society has changed since that time, but unfortunately our preaching tactics too often have not. Not many people are anxiously searching for proper priesthood authority to baptize. They are, however, searching for happiness and peace in their families in this life and in eternity, forgiveness from their sins and peace of conscience, closeness to God, understanding of truth, etc. These are all things that baptism into our church can give them. These are the things people are searching for, and as missionaries we need to help them see the connection between those things and baptism, and not get too hung up on authority.