My church believes the baptism is necessary because Christ commanded it. The only thing is that you need to repent first and acknowledge him as your savior then you get baptized, but we do see it simply as an outward sign of our conversion. Your actual conversion is when you receive the Holy Spirit by accepting Christ as Lord and Savior and repenting.
We believe that you should be baptized because in Acts it says repent and be baptized. We don’t believe that it is connected to salvation because Paul himself said that he was not sent to baptize but to preach the gospel. If baptism was necessary for salvation then Paul would have found it necessary to baptize and preach the gospel.
The Holy Spirit is received before you get baptized. In Acts 10 it says the the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message and then they got baptized. Peter ordered the baptism of those who had already received the Holy Spirit.
That’s why we see it the way we do