Baptisms

Dear Pastors

Most Pastors I have met over the last 35 or so years deeply desire to see baptisms happening on a regular basis in their churches. Indeed most Elders and congregations would like to see that as well. We all know that baptisms mean people have discovered the amazing grace Jesus has offered to them and they want their sins forgiven and to follow him. In short baptisms are about a public profession of personal faith in Christ or conversion as we commonly call it.

This is our core business along with making disciples of those new converts and indeed all believers. That’s why we exist.

I know that a lot churches of all sizes in NZ go year in and year out without the joy and celebration that baptisms bring to their church (or very occasionally if at all). There are a whole range of reasons for this (that we could discuss another day). The last thing I want to do here or anywhere is make you or anyone feel bad or shame you in some way. No, I would much rather encourage you.

Here are a few suggestions that I have found helpful over the years.

• When you get up on Sunday mornings (in fact every morning) remember that one of your objectives is to be a fisherman….fisher of people. Believe for it, pray for it and expect conversions.
• Give people an opportunity to respond to the Gospel most Sundays of the year. It need not take long to offer folks an invitation.
• Have some age appropriate follow-up materials ready at all times including youth and children’s ministries.
• Have a few special events every year that are targeted for unchurched people but whole heartedly supported by all your people.
• Make it easy for people to invite their non-Christian friends to church. Things like nicely published invitations/flyers, cool events and interesting topics.
• Have your own story(s) Pastor. How quickly we can end up in a ivory tower or fortress talking about witnessing and evangelism, urging the saints to get out and do it all the while we have no up to date story of our own. People see through that very quickly I’ve discovered.
• Put together a focus group and ask this one question. Would you invite your non-Christian friends to our church? If no, why not?
• Provide some training for all the saints on how to do effective witnessing that is sensible, easy to do, natural and even fun.

The great need of the hour in the NZ church I believe is to increase the evangelistic temperature in all our churches¹. That is something we can all do and guess what at no or very little expense. Imagine if every local church saw 5% (of their current attendance) of conversions. For a church of 200 that would be 10 people. Nationally that would be approximately 17,000 new people saved and baptised this year². Then in 2019 we increased to 7.5%, and now that we are getting better at witnessing in 2020 we up-ed to 10% and kept it at 10% every year. Wow…imagine!!!

This we can do.

Blessings

Alan

This we can do.

Blessings

Alan

¹ I blogged about this same issue in July last year but came at the calculation a bit differently. You can find that blog here.

² Based on 7% on NZ’s population being regular church attenders.

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Alan Vink is currently the Executive Director for LeadershipWorx. Prior to this role he has been the Executive Director of Willow Creek Association NZ (WillowNZ), a Baptist pastor (23 years), Bible College teacher, and church consultant.