Online Baptism
Baptism is the first step of obedience in a new believer's life.
Baptism is widely regarded as "an outward showing of an inner change" of a new believer. Baptism symbolizes the death of the old self and burial, then the resurrection into a new life. The other critical aspects of baptism are the confession of the believer's faith, and the presence of witnesses. An online baptism, such as the ones performed at Infinite Church, fulfills all of these basic requirements.
At Infinite Church, we animate the new believer's avatar along with that of the person baptizing him. Generally, we ask the new believer some basic questions about his newfound faith, such as if he believes that Jesus is the Son of God, who lived a perfect life and died on a cross for our sin. We also ask if the new believer has repented of his sin and asked Jesus to be the Lord of his life. If the new believer is in agreement with these questions, we begin to animate the baptism into the "water", and bring them up again to rise and walk a new life. As a special perk, our current baptism room is a picture from the Jordan River.
The symbolic element of baptism is reinforced by passages such as 1 Peter 3:21 - "This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you also - not the removal of dirt from the body, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, it saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." After all, it is by faith and not by works, that we are saved. (Rom 3:28) Baptism is a work that comes out of obedience after we are saved by faith.
The word baptism comes from the greek word "baptizo", which means to immerse, dip, plunge, or bury in water. Many denominations believe that nothing less (sprinkling, christening, etc) is valid as a baptism. Likewise, a baptism is no good if it takes place before a believer professes faith in Jesus as Savior, since the baptism itself is a completion of this profession of faith.
Many denominations believe that salvation occurs at the moment of baptism, and not before. This is supported by John 3:5, where Jesus says that unless a man is born again of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Others believe that salvation occurs first, and the act of baptism is the first step of obedience to the new life. Either way, the exact moment of salvation, while interesting for theological debate, becomes a moot point once you have accepted Jesus and been baptized.
So is an online baptism as valid as a real-life one? Our non-theological answer is that the symbolism makes a reasonable case to consider an online baptism as valid as a real-life immersion of your physical body. However, we feel it is best to treat the online baptism as a chance to profess your faith to fellow believers online so that they may celebrate the conversion experience with you. We recommend that you also plan a baptism in water with your local body of believers.