For several years now, I have been greatly burdened by the declining number of baptisms across the Southern Baptist Convention. I believe the baptism numbers serve as one of the best indicators of evangelism in our churches. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, and that means that proclaiming the gospel is the core of who we are—not only as Southern Baptists, but most importantly as disciples of Jesus Christ.

That’s why I’m challenging every Southern Baptist church to call for baptisms in services on Sept. 8th, the date our SBC Executive Committee has designated as “Baptism Day” on the SBC Calendar.

Baptism Sunday will be an opportunity for thousands of people in our churches to take their step of obedience and faith. Many of them already know they should be baptized, and you can schedule baptism celebrations in advance. Other people in your churches may decide on Sept. 8th that God is calling them to those same baptismal waters.

I know that conversations about immediate-response baptism services tend to draw some objections, many of which are grounded in healthy concern about encouraging insincere professions of faith. Trust me, I understand the concerns: I have seen dangerous and irresponsible calls for spontaneous baptisms. God forbid that we ever declare someone “saved” when they aren’t. Not only does this give them false assurance, but it also makes them that much more immune to future calls to repent and believe.

Our fear of extending these invitations wrongly, though, should never make us shy away from making the invitations at all. After all, every single baptism recorded in the New Testament, without exception, is spontaneous and immediate. For New Testament believers, the pattern was alarmingly simple: Believe, confess, get baptized. There was never a gap between when a person trusted Christ and when that person was baptized. Not one.

This follows the example of Jesus’ Great Commission: “Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Baptism is a believer’s first act of discipleship, a step of obedience that stands as a witness that we belong to Christ.

Baptism is like the wedding ring of salvation. I put on my wedding ring at the moment I decided to publicly declare my commitment to my wife. Putting on the ring did not make me married. I am no more married when I wear my ring than when I don’t. But the demonstration of my commitment to my wife that the ring represents was a crucial first step in marriage. Had I refused to do it, my wife would have had reason to question my intentions. 

In the same way, baptism is an outward symbol of an inward covenant we’ve made in response to Jesus’ offer of salvation. 

Every one of our churches ought to do everything in its power to ensure that everyone who comes forward to be baptized understands the gospel and the significance of what they are doing. Just because the decision is more immediate doesn’t mean it should be hasty or sloppy. During baptism services at our church, for instance, we individually counsel every person who comes forward. Those conversations take time—often extending into the next service—and we always end up turning some people away. But that moment is important, because it starts a conversation about what it means to follow Jesus.

Baptism is of tremendous importance, but we need to keep the biblical order in mind: Baptism is the catalyst to spiritual maturity, not the sign of having attained it. 

When we invite people to be baptized, we are calling them to make a decision. That’s exactly what so many of our people need. They come to our churches as consumers, going along with Jesus but never deciding for him. 

This is personal for me. My dad became a Christian because he responded to an invitation in the middle of a church service. During the worship service, he didn’t think he needed to change. He thought everything was fine. But then one day the pastor called for a decision. It was one of those traditional invitations, too—the kind where they sing 58 stanzas of “Just As I Am.” Well, for my dad, that was the moment the Holy Spirit came after him. He knew in that moment that he had to make a decision. When he let go of the pew and walked forward, his life changed.  

Several years ago, our church chose to hold our first baptism service after we noticed the biblical pattern of spontaneous baptisms while preaching through a series in the book of Acts. Starting with that service, we saw three times more people choose to be baptized that year than we’d ever seen! I believe that’s because our church had been faithful in sharing the gospel, and we chose to be faithful in calling for a response to that good news. 

I’ve been encouraged by the many stories of faithful evangelism in our denomination through initiatives like “Who’s Your One,” and I believe God is preparing a harvest of souls. Let’s faithfully call them to respond by publicly declaring faith through baptism!  

For  resources, go to namb.net/baptism-sunday-resources.

I didn’t learn to be a tither when I was growing up; my wife taught me that after she was my wife. In fact, most aspects of discipleship came to me from Tammi or from my professors and peers at Criswell College during my early 20s. The church that licensed me never asked about money and neither did the one that ordained me, though my ordination council was very thorough by today’s standards. I served on staff for several churches and none of them asked me about my giving habits that I remember. I only now consider that puzzling. It would be easy to get the idea that this aspect of following Christ is not very important, or is too private to speak of. 

Five of the churches I’ve been a member of, including the one that baptized me when I was 10, have closed their doors. Money was a big factor, one of the two most obvious factors, in these transitions. But we all know that giving and attendance are usually symptoms of some other malady. Frankly, most of those churches didn’t teach my generation to give because they just assumed we would intuit that the Bible teaches stewardship. Nope. Even my former churches that are still moving along struggle with very low participation in service and giving. 

I started thinking about this when I saw a newsletter from an old friend who consults with churches on capital campaigns. He was noting a Barna study that showed the different attitude toward giving that people under 40 demonstrate. This Millennial generation gives spontaneously, based on sentiment, I’m told. His point was that we are going to see a rapid drop off in giving over the next few years. In response to that, some ministries and churches encourage giving by text or even an app that allows them to capture the moment of inspiration the young person might be feeling. One app, called Millie, features a few causes at a time and enables a person to give to causes formerly unknown. The few rotate so that the spontaneous giver has other options when the app is opened next time. I don’t gainsay efforts to get ahead of trends, and I don’t deny that generations have different tendencies, but I do disagree with the attitude that a trend is fate. We are not marketers chasing the cultural curve; we are prophets, teachers, disciplers and preachers of revealed truth. There is an important “ought to” in this discussion rather than just an “is.” My Baby Boomer generation did not neglect giving or other expressions of commitment and devotion because we are anti-establishment; we turned away from these things because our role models didn’t seem to value them. Consider some “oughts” about Christian financial stewardship. 

Leaders ought to know what God says about money. My friend Bart McDonald recently reminded me that Malachi 3:10 (“tithe into the storehouse…”) and 2 Corinthians 9:7 (“…cheerful giver”) don’t exhaust what the Bible says about money, greed, treasure, gratitude and faith. I’ve heard a theology of evangelism preached in church as well as theologies of marriage, childrearing, rock music and television—but no theology of giving except during a capital campaign or budget slump. We should study it more diligently. 

Leaders ought to give generously to their church. I would say tithe at least, but I’m not going to argue with you about that number. That means deacons, teachers, music leaders and pastors should model what they teach and what they believe should happen. Tammi and I raised three Millennials who are not sentimental, occasional church members. They have decided to do generally what they heard us teach and saw us do. Church members will give if their leaders show giving to be important to them. The fact that a church will not consider a deacon or pastor who doesn’t come to church but commonly elevates men to these roles without asking them about other spiritual disciplines is a clear message to those who watch them lead.

Preach it brothers! If God says it and you believe it, say so. I’ve known evangelistic pastors who never taught their churches to witness, teetotaler pastors who never said what they believed to be the best way to handle beverage alcohol and prayer warriors who never challenged the church to join them. What do you think happened? 

Follow up. If I stop coming to church, somebody will eventually call or stop by to ask how we’re doing. If I stop showing up to teach my class, I’ll get an even quicker response. If I stop giving, who notices? Who has the nerve to ask me what is happening between me and God that causes me to neglect this aspect of devotion? Again, if it’s important people will know it’s important, and we as church leaders will expend ourselves to say so. 

There are books, experts, study guides and even not-for-profit ministries available to help churches design and implement a plan, just like there are for evangelism. My point is not to tell anyone what to do but to say that most churches should probably be more interested in this subject than is apparent to their members. Inaction has spiritual consequences that outlive the organizational ones that usually get our attention.  

HOUSTON  A church planter in Houston has seen God implement what he calls a “ministry of suffering” in his local church after his 4-year-old son was born with a heart defect that has required three open heart surgeries.

Cameron Whitley and his wife Hannah had two sons and were expecting a third when they learned from a routine sonogram that the baby was missing a right ventricle, or essentially had half a heart. 

Whitley had grown up at Fielder Church in Arlington and was on staff in the youth department there while in college at Dallas Baptist University. He served six years on staff at The Woodlands Church near Houston before moving to the Atlanta area in 2014 to serve as a campus pastor at Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, Ga.

The Whitleys had been in Georgia about a year and a half when they learned their third son, Judson, would face such a difficult journey, and, as Cameron recounted to the TEXAN, “We thought our world was unraveling.”

“Unfortunately, there is a bad theology we can have as believers where we think, ‘If I walk in obedience, if I walk in faith, then everything is going to be great for me.’ Sometimes we believe that lie,” Whitley said. “For us, it was really disheartening. It challenged our faith. It challenged our calling. It challenged our ability to remain hopeful in the midst what seemed like tragedy. 

“We didn’t know what Day 1 would look like for Judson, much less what his life would look like. We were battling through the pregnancy with a lot of anxiety and fear.”

Judson was born in the spring of 2015, and when he was three days old he had his first open heart surgery, and in the aftermath he developed a wound infection that required more surgery. He was hospitalized for the first seven weeks of his life, and God used that time to work in his parents’ spiritual lives.

“Hannah and I would leave every morning around 5:30 or 6, we’d go to the hospital and stay until about 4 p.m. … My wife and I spent an hour on the drive there together, we spent all day at his bedside, talking and praying and reading while we were there with him, and then we would drive an hour and a half or more back home,” Whitley said.

“What that really did for us, that’s probably the most concentrated time that we had spent together in our entire relationship.” 

All the while, God was preparing them for a new church planting assignment. 

In the weeks that followed, Whitley was led to travel to Texas, where he sensed God calling him to plant a new church in a growing area of northeast Houston. Despite the upheaval in their family that accompanied bringing home a new baby with extra needs, the Whitleys followed God’s leading and moved to Houston to plant a church.

By then, Judson had endured a second open heart surgery at five months old and again had acquired an infection that meant weeks of hospitalization in Atlanta, but he was improving. The Whitleys hosted three vision nights for the new plant and—through inviting friends and spreading the word on social media—developed a core group that grew from 28 people in March 2016 to 65 people in August. 

“We baptized six people on our core team. A lot of our core team were believers. Some of them weren’t,” Whitley said. “Four of the six were our neighbors that we had grown in relationship with. We had an energizing start to what has been an amazing journey.”

In September 2016, West Lake Church was launched with 241 people in attendance. Sponsored by Fielder Church, they’ve been meeting at Summer Creek High School and are averaging 220 people as they approach their third anniversary, Whitley said. 

“Church planting is 10 times more overwhelming than a person could imagine, but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else anywhere else,” he said. “It’s a very redeemed ‘overwhelming.’”

Judson had his third and what doctors expect was his final open heart surgery last November, and despite many people praying that he wouldn’t get an infection, he did.

“It was a kick in the stomach for us,” Whitley said. Hannah was pregnant at the time with their fourth son, and “it was very deflating for us.” The infection meant a two-and-a-half-week hospital stay that coincided with Christmas and New Year’s.

“Planting has been the easiest part of the last four years,” Whitley said, comparing something that is hard enough on its own to something that no parent wants his or her child to have to face. 

After the first six months of Judson’s life, considering what the Whitleys had been through physically with their son and spiritually with the Lord in that season, “it was kind of like, ‘What could be harder than that? What would he ask us to do that would require more faith or more endurance or more hope than that?’” Whitley said.

“To a degree, the old cliché of refining took place for us, and … what ended up being a beautiful thing at West Lake Church is the ministry of suffering and how needed that is in a church body, in a church family.

“If there’s never a recognition, if there’s never a testimony, if there’s never a speaking of suffering, then you lose the power of grace, you lose the power of mercy, you lose the power of fellowship, you lose the power of hope,” Whitley said. “I think one thing that it’s done for us as shepherds is allowed other people, specifically at West Lake and even just friends we have who aren’t a part of church, to see an openness of suffering, which is a very specific ministry.”

Through social media in particular, Hannah has been able to shepherd other women who are walking through similar trials with their children, and she even has ministered to mothers whose children have died. 

“For my wife and I, there’s a very specific testimony that is interwoven into West Lake Church because of Judson,” Whitley said.