Northside Ministers

Churches of Christ understand the Bible to teach that baptism/immersion is necessary if one is to be saved. We know that without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11.6), so we know that one must have faith in God when one is immersed or it is not baptism. Immersion becomes baptism when one, in faith, is responding to God's call.
Several things happen at one's baptism according to the Scripture: you become one of Christ's disciples (Matthew 28.19-20); you are saved (Mark 16.16, 1 Peter 3.20); you are born again (John 3.5, 1 Cor 12.13, Titus 3.5, 1 Cor 6.11); your sins are washed away (Acts 2.38, Acts 22.16); and you are put into Christ (Gal 3.27, Rom 6.3). These are just some of the things the Bible says happens at baptism. There are more.
Now here is where I start hearing the "yabbuts." Yeah, but those people are doing so much for Jesus. Yeah, but what if someone dies before they can be baptized? Yeah, but what about the guy in the middle of the desert? Yeah, but what about the thief on the cross? And on and on it goes. But think carefully before you go head-long into dismissing something the New Testament talks over and over about-Paul cursed those who preached a different gospel. And for him, the gospel is the act of God and one's response to that act. And God gets to define the response. Did you hear that? God gets to define the response. He has told us what He considers to be an appropriate response. Belief plus immersion equals salvation (Mk 16.16). Can you be saved by just getting immersed? No. Can you be saved by just believing? And here is where the majority of the evangelical world starts fish-tailing.
Instead of just responding to the gospel the way the Bible explains it, people have invented the sinner's prayer. People discard something the Bible talks about and insert something they've invented. So everything Scripture says happens at baptism is attributed to the sinner's prayer. Baptism becomes a means of being identified with a congregation, not with the Lord. God obviously has the right to save those who misunderstand baptism, just like He has the right to save those who misunderstand other important doctrines. But that does not invalidate what He has already told us to do to respond to His call. We have to preach it and teach it.
I don't believe in magic water, but I believe in faith. I don't know why God chose immersion as the instrument of our translation from death into life, other than it resembles a burial. And it serves as a burial if we truly believe that Jesus is the Son of God and was sacrificed on our behalf so that we may live life abundantly. God determined and explained the appropriate response to the gospel, both initially (the point in time when one's name is written in the book of life) and ongoing (discipleship is a life lived according to the will of God). Let us do our best to teach and live both.