Midweek Podcast Ep 2 Baptisms and Wave Pools

Hey Jason.

Hey Madison.

Hi.

How are you?

So uh something strange has been happening at our church.

Something unprecedented.

Well, not unprecedented.

In the last uh in the last few years.

But of we've had a very few uh like odd weeks.

We have had four Sundays as of today without a baptism.

Dun dun dun It's over.

All gonna crumble down.

It's all filled.

I've been like praying, Lord, have we messed up?

What are we doing?

I know.

Yeah, so but I think that feeling so odd is a testament to God doing some really cool stuff.

So how long have we had like pretty much every week?

There's been a few odd weeks here and there.

I think last year we had two Sundays without a baptism.

And the year before that, maybe one.

Yeah.

And the year before like we've we've had I mean, we've had baptisms essentially every week, somewhere between one and three people getting baptized every Sunday.

Right.

For I would say close to two and a half, three years now.

And before COVID, because we had to pause for a little bit there, the year before COVID, we had like the most baptisms we'd ever had.

And it was like, I mean, just sometimes weeks five, six, it was just every week.

Yeah.

We had to go to every week.

Because we had so many people signing up.

We were once a month.

Every other week.

And then it was just like, well, instead of doing five every week.

We used to be twice a year, we'd have like two big baptism Sundays.

Yep.

And then we've made it um once a month because we wanted it to be more often and sure be able to focus more on the individuals, and then we had so many, it became weekly.

And now we've had four weeks without a baptism.

Without a baptism.

Well, why do you think uh was it because of all of your amazing preaching and teaching the Lord has removed his hand of favor from our church?

No, but why do you think two years with pretty much baptisms every single week?

What do you think was happening there?

I think that uh well that's the that's why we're having this podcast, right?

Yeah.

Um I think God was just moving.

And I think people were responding to maybe other people getting baptized were inspiring them to get baptized because we weren't really talking about it.

I didn't teach on baptism at all.

We we always say, like, hey, if you're ready to get baptized, here's where you can go sign up for that.

But we don't we don't have any moments during the service where we push for it, so to speak.

So is it important?

It was just an or pretty organic thing, I guess that's the right, like a spirit, whatever language you want to use.

God was God was up to it.

It was God doing it.

It was not man-made.

Sure.

You know, our plan worked.

Yeah.

We we our baptism strategy is working.

It was none of that.

Is it important in this conversation to clarify what we believe about baptism?

Like on a front end, like we believe in believers' baptism, you know.

Yeah, sure.

So what what is his hand's approach to baptism in general?

The baptism is a an early step in your faith journey that should happen uh I would say almost immediately after the decision to follow Jesus.

Um people wait, some people have lots of other reasons and kind of holdups and hang-ups and pressure and all kinds of stuff.

But if you've given your life to Jesus, if you've in your heart committed your life to him, one of your first steps of obedience in that is to be baptized, uh, immersion of water, um, symbolic of Jesus going into the tomb and raising our old life being gone, our new life being born.

And it's uh it's just an early act of obedience that demonstrates to the world that you've given your life to Jesus.

Well, there you go.

And yeah, starting point, not a finish line.

I've got lots of other things I could say about it.

Yeah.

Um, you don't have to have all your stuff together to get baptized, you don't have to be like sin-free.

Sure.

Uh, it's an early step that shows that you are, I'm taking this really seriously.

I want the whole world to know I follow Jesus.

Cool.

Yeah.

An outward sign of an outward sign of an inward decision.

That is like the cliche church version of saying it.

But it's true.

I mean, it is true.

No, it's fine.

It's where we where we stand on it.

And so um one reason why we haven't had baptisms in the past couple weeks might be because we ran out of people.

They're done.

The people that are in our church, they're they're believers.

We have a lot of believers because we've had seasons of new people coming, and so it's like, oh yeah, this is true.

I mean, not that there would be no new people into the future.

We've grown a lot in the last few years.

Um and then this last month it's been sort of like a it's like sort of balanced out.

That that happens.

Right.

Um But uh eventually the the thought would be if you're not constantly bringing in people, you know, who Revolving Doors, like, oh, our our people they're they've put their faith in Jesus.

That might be part of the Yeah.

So now what we're gonna do is really make them question, but did you really?

Did you really?

Are you sure?

We show pictures of them at their baptism.

Here's your think of how much.

Here's your Facebook feed.

This this last post doesn't seem to line up with time to get baptized again.

Right.

No, it's uh no, it's funny because we have baptisms on Easter.

We had two people get baptized on Easter.

And which is awesome.

It was super awesome.

So cool.

But baptisms for me are like, I think m we did a podcast on money, it's sort of in the same ballpark uh or or category.

But it's but more so with baptisms, it's this constant thing where it's like I know, if I'm being honest, because I'm usually not, right?

I'm usually no.

I know that we could do things that I think would lead to people to more people getting baptized.

Like I'm pretty sure if on Sunday you could apply the pressure, is that what you're saying?

Yeah, I think you can create emotionally charged moments.

Um or and I don't think like okay, let's say I had a conviction that, oh, like something's off.

I'm gonna preach on baptism.

We're gonna talk about this.

I think people sign up to get baptized.

I don't think that would be wrong if it came from the Lord.

Right.

Right?

If God was like, hey, okay, that's fine.

But baptism is the one thing where we are so hyper focused in our culture on not pressuring people that whenever you go four weeks without a baptism, it's like, well, I don't want to go five.

I don't definitely want to go six.

What if we never have another baptism again?

Oh my gosh.

And it's just like, should I do something that will fix this?

And that's like this sort of constant battle and tension where there's some really deep convictions we have as a church that that would completely go against.

Right.

And I have to just sit there and go, okay, Lord, I I trust you we're gonna keep teaching on Jesus.

And yeah.

Yeah.

Because the sign of a church's success is not in its baptisms alone.

And it's not in its attendance alone.

It's not in its it's it's uh it's what got it.

Oh that said, this is true.

Sure.

Zach's our camera guy, and he's here right now, does a lot of video.

I did want you to make a baptism montage of all the people who have been baptized in like the last part of this year.

No, no, no, not for this.

No, but I can't.

No, and go.

Now it's playing.

But that's we do that like a couple times a year, and we actually haven't done that in a while.

So I would we I was gonna talk to you.

It sounds like a wave pool kind of thing.

I don't think that's a wave pool.

You think so?

Maybe.

I don't think so.

No, I don't think so.

I think it's uh well let's talk about what wave pool means for a second.

Okay, there you go.

So that's the filter.

Baptism is one of the one of the parts of the church where this hits me like the hardest.

We have this conviction, or maybe maybe this is a conviction I have, is that I don't want a wave pool, I want the ocean.

Sure.

Okay, so if you've ever been to the ocean.

We've been riding a wave.

So it's a surfing analogy.

I've never even surfed.

As a surfer.

I've never surfed, but I think like here's the idea of it.

This is what this means.

A surfer, of which I've never been, or really don't want to be, because I don't care.

Um I think Shia LaBeouf from Surfs Up.

I think his name is Cody.

Okay, I've never seen it.

That is a surfer sound.

You've got to watch Surfs Up.

I've never seen that movie.

You've got to watch Surfs Up.

I guess that's what I'm doing later.

It's super good.

Okay.

So surfers don't make the waves.

They learn how to discern when the waves are coming, where the waves are, they put themselves in a position to ride the wave, then they train themselves to ride that wave as long as possible.

When that wave ends, it's over.

And then you go find another wave.

Right.

And you're not in control of when the waves are.

Um wave pools are manufactured versions of the ocean that are guaranteed.

And if you've ever been in a wave pool, it's like this kind of feels like the ocean.

It does.

I also also, am I gonna die?

Right.

Someone's gonna die.

Right.

You always look around and go, how's this lifeguard keeping track of this?

There's like two lifeguards and there's just a sea of people going up and down.

Is that was that tube empty when they got here?

Yeah.

Someone is it's amazing that there's not a death every day at a wave pool.

But a wave pool is a man-made, manufactured version of the real thing.

And it's always been a conviction of mine that when it comes to a lot of this sort of uh, you know, a lot of the church stuff, I just I want things to be a move of God.

And I never want here's what the my personal part.

I never want to stand on the stage because I stand pretty close to where people get baptized and look at it and think to myself, the plan worked.

I did this.

100%.

I don't want that thought.

Right.

And maybe that's an omission that I'm susceptible to that thought.

I don't know.

But I want to know that when and I also don't want people to ever get baptized and then like two weeks later go, was that real, or was I just responding to a super emotionally charged moment?

Because I grew up in a church culture that did a lot of that.

And I personally uh questioned some decisions I made later on because I was in very emotionally charged moments, and I think out of guilt, fear, and shame, I made some big commitments that actually were like what really was happening is I was just feeling convicted about stuff I needed to change in my mind.

To repent.

Yeah, just to repent, essentially.

Thank you.

Um so you know, at his hands, we've always just sort of let we've not made those moments.

We don't have emotionally charged ends of messages where we like who's ready right now in this moment.

Right.

We just say, hey, if you're ready to do this, this is what it looks like.

And we let people take their time so that when they decide to get baptized and go all in and make that known, we don't have to go, and they don't have to go, was this just because I felt an emotional feeling, or was this you know, and I've always been amazed at how many people get baptized, and it's like they're just in their own time, ready to make this decision.

But then we have four weeks without a baptism.

Negative go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I I know I was I was kind of joking.

It's uh it is important to kind of celebrate the fact that you know.

And every year, about twice a year, we've made a little montage video of that.

And I was thinking the other day, like do you feel like after that, like if the week after that there's like five baptism signups, do you feel like you'd feel differently?

So how about this, Zach?

I want you to make that video, but I don't want to show it until another person gets baptized.

Boom.

So we're not gonna show we're not gonna like show that.

There you go.

We'll just do that.

Yeah, because I don't want to do that.

But yeah, it's intention, right?

I want to celebrate what God's doing.

Right.

Want to tell people what to do.

Yeah, it's also yeah, you do need to communicate what baptism is.

Right.

And usually when we have baptisms every week, that's the communication point.

So you do need to, in the lack of that.

Yeah.

We've got a couple people that have signed up but just have had a I just had a conversation with a college.

I'm not worried about it.

But you probably need to get that guy like I know.

I told him I told him the end of the month.

Okay.

Um but yeah, it's it's interesting.

And so it's really it's funny this last month, because it was weird when we had two weeks.

Right.

And now it's like four.

And I just had to stop and go, okay, Lord, well, do I actually believe what I've been saying that I trust you to move and we'll respond, and we're not gonna we're not gonna try to make it happen in the human way.

And not to mix metaphors, but I think like being in ministry is uh there's a lot of like seed planting work.

It's not necessarily like you get to see the fruit of it all of the time, and this has been a season of of harvest, you know what I mean?

Correct.

To say, like, oh, we've been seeing this the seeds do something, you know, God's God's working, and we have contributed to that.

People do come talk to you and say, like, hey, I'm I'm making this decision.

Can you help me process it?

Um I've had those conversations.

I've gotten to baptize like a bunch of teenagers this year.

It's been you have it's the highlight of my job.

Yeah.

Um, but it is, it's like, well, we're not gonna stop planting seeds, we're just gonna keep doing that, even though we're not in a season.

Another example we'll do is another metaphor.

Closer to what yours is than the surfing is uh like fruit growing on trees.

Right.

Which could be connected to seeds.

Every fruit starts they maybe, yeah.

Um Psalm 1 talks about a person who delights in the Lord, right?

Yeah, like a tree planted by a stream, right?

And it says that bearing fruit in its season.

And I just read that this morning.

And it's like, okay, yeah, it doesn't bear fruit randomly.

It bears fruit in its season.

And there are seasons.

There are seasons of, like you said, there's seasons of planting, seasons of harvest.

And so what you don't want to do though, as a church, is become so dependent on the emotional satisfaction of seeing that happen that if it doesn't happen for a few weeks, you're like, we've got to make this happen.

Yeah, you know, and that's and that's just a art again, it's a cultural thing.

We want the ocean not a wave pool.

Yeah.

We want to respond to what God is doing, not try to make, not try to force God to do something.

You know what I mean?

And there's a lot of like, dude, even like charismatic church culture with like healings and stuff, um, you know, I'm not, I don't I believe that God heals, and I've experienced that, I've seen that.

But it's amazing to me how it'll be like, we're gonna have a healing night.

Yeah.

And like we've put that on the calendar.

Right.

And so, and I guess on one hand, you're like, well, we have the faith that God will show up.

We've we know people.

That's fine.

I'm not against that, but I just know that man, so much of that stuff.

There's been so many things that have come out where things were manufactured.

You don't want to put uh people's faith on the line when God's not up to that.

You know what I mean?

It's not a time for that.

Exactly.

So yeah, but it's so it's just one of those kind of things that indicates or or it's uh reflective of of our culture.

And it really the last four weeks it's really put to the test for me because I have again, I have all these ideas like, ooh, we could well, we could do that, we could do this, and it would probably work.

Like someone would sign up.

Yeah, but like you said, the the fruit would be kind of squishy.

So it's it might not be in season.

Yes, we uh shop at Aldi, and Aldi has kind of this quirk of they they stock things really regularly, but if the fruit is out of season, they're still just gonna kind of stock, but like terrible version of that fruit.

So that's how, yeah, you go to I mean any grocery store and it's never like we only sell watermelon in the summer.

But right.

They sell watermelon year-round, year round.

They make it happen.

But at Aldi, particularly, they don't like do the highest quality like greenhouse strawberries.

It's just like the the kind of worst strawberries.

We found some strawberries when it's out of season.

And so it's it is, it's like we can still force this to happen.

Yeah, it's just not gonna be what you're actually looking for.

And so we throw away a lot of strawberries when it's out of season.

And so, yeah, like you're saying, we don't want to force people to get baptized if it's not their season and not their decision to actually make that versus forcing it to happen because moments later, days later, months later, they're gonna be struggling, they're gonna be confused when um they could have actually had that authentic experience in time.

Well, and especially like modern church culture is so much about creating epic feeling moments.

So this is like this kind of like pulls the curtain back on a whole different part of church culture because like I used to yell a lot more in my messages, for example.

Like if you go back and listen to I don't know, three or four years ago, I was just more emphatic.

I think I'm still engaging, okay?

Maybe I'm saying a little insecure, but I'm not.

I think I'm still engaging and I'm whatever.

But I yeah, I'm not as loud, okay?

Right.

And I remember the first time I ever like yelled a little in a message.

They did.

Yeah.

And it was like 10 years ago, and I kind of just got like I had like a single moment in the message, I was like, people clapped.

And it felt good.

And it actually felt like, oh, something happened.

And I it wasn't like I'm gonna make this happen.

That wasn't my mentality, but it was like it was more me going, well, I mean, I don't wanna, I don't wanna be, I don't want to hold back.

Right.

You know, I want to be passionate, that is a word probably.

So, you know, I got kind of used to that, and I would more often how was it-you're yes, I was never a pastor who was like, every message was like I shifted into this different vernacular and this different like Justin's this is preaching, Justin, but I would just be more emphatic.

And then COVID hit, and I started having to record messages to a camera, and Zach was there, like Zach, I'm looking at Zach or what's up, Zach?

Again, acknowledging.

We've done acknowledge Zach a lot this episode.

Hi, Zach.

Hi, um, hey.

Uh and I remember like filming one time with just me and Zach in a room, and I was yelling.

You just kind of seemed like a crazy person.

It was weird.

I was like, who am I to stop?

And I was like, I who am I yelling at?

Like so which revealed an aspect of like maybe I should more people are in the room.

I started thinking, where else do I yell and it's a good thing?

And it's never like I yell at my son during a basketball game, and I always regret that.

Or I yell at my wife when I'm angry, or I yell at my kids when they do something.

I almost always I'm sorry, I yelled.

And it's like, well, why do I yell so much?

And so I just sort of shift it a little bit, and that's part of maturing and growing and all that.

And now I just go, you know, I I would rather I'd rather say things that I've thought through, researched, prayed through, all that stuff, and I believe that what I said holds weight, stands on its own, and if someone wants to take that and think on it, that will have the impact versus the emphatic thing.

Because if you yell, this is the thing.

If you yell in church, if I this Sunday I get up and I go on a thing and I start doing like, I call it like the machine gun, like you just start emphatically saying, like, he will do it, the dah, dah da, da, dot.

People will start clapping.

Right.

Some people will love it, some people might just be clapping and say, please stop.

Like, you know what I mean?

But my point is it's easy to, it's actually easy to sort of manipulate crowds and get certain responses.

Same thing applies to baptism, same thing applies to it could apply to giving and to money.

You could do certain tactics.

And so as a church, we've just been super focused forever on we're not going to do those things.

And I actually have had people have a hard time with it, especially with like altar calls.

Have you ever go to churches that did altar calls or had any experience at like an event with an altar call?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Been to the every head bow, every eye closed sort of situation.

I grew up in that church culture, and that was like an every Sunday thing.

And not people didn't always come forward.

Sure.

Um, but I had people here ask, like, we don't do that.

And I had I've had some people here who grown up in that who feel like we're really missing it.

Because they're like, hey, you did you I've had someone say to me, You did a great message, you presented the gospel, but man, you missed the chance to, you didn't give people a chance to respond.

And I'm not the person who started our church, the couple who started, I'm the second guy.

So I always have to figure out what do we change, what do we keep the same.

Sure.

And they never did that either.

And yet I'd never been a part of a church that had this many people get baptized.

And so I was like, so I had to really wrestle with that, and I did some research and I found out that like altar calls weren't even a thing until about 150 years ago in church history.

That was not a thing until um kind of like tent revivals and all that stuff.

So it's a new part of church culture.

Right.

And then I thought we could do that, and again, I think it would work.

Sure.

People would respond.

But then how many of those people, how many people have responded to altar calls at some big thing?

And then, you know, years later, it's like, I didn't really mean that.

It was just uh it's almost like it's a weird thing.

I think what you're trying to say is like crowds, crowds can be easy to manipulate, but it's not worth putting an individual's faith on the line at at the cost of the event feeling like feeling like a success.

Right.

Yeah.

And so there's nothing wrong with in the moment seeing something about God and responding to God.

I think of like uh Philip in the Ethiopian, where it's like, who is this?

They're reading Isaiah together.

It's like, who who is this talking about?

He's like, let me tell you, it's about Jesus.

And he's like, So then what stops me from getting baptized?

Nothing.

Nothing.

There's water.

There's water over there.

Let's go.

And so then he baptizes them.

So there is like precedent for uh an in-the-moment response of salvation and baptism all happening all together.

Correct.

And actually, this last Sunday I was out of town, so Fred spoke and uh at the time of our recording.

And so Fred uh he actually said, Hey, this message really lends itself to an invitation.

And he said, Are you cool if I give one?

And I said, Absolutely.

And so Fred comes from a little bit of a different background, right?

Right in his experience.

So he was asking me, How do you want that to go?

And his original thought was you know, having people stand up if they want to make a decision or whatever, um, you know, to decide to get baptized.

And I was like, Well, let's not have people stand up.

Sure.

I was like, just put it out there, then tell people if you've if you've made that decision, go sign up to get baptized, or go to the prayer room and you know, get prayed, get prayed for.

Because we have a space where people can go get prayer on Sundays after church.

And I said, I so I'm super comfortable with the idea of an invitation.

It's just the the moment of we've we've created this moment.

And this is the moment where you're gonna respond and we're gonna see it.

I just feel like those I've just seen that stuff done so much, and I don't know, it feels a little bit like a wave pool, not the ocean, I guess is that that's what I'm saying.

And we might be too careful on that.

I'll admit that.

We might be almost too cautious because we don't want those moments.

Yeah, we miss an opportunity.

Maybe but what I can say is since we started as a church almost 20 years ago, we've had uh on average, over a hundred people get baptized a year, roughly, right?

We've had 2100 people baptized in less than 20 years.

So there's that.

Some seasons it's been like 150, 170, some seasons maybe it's like 65, whatever, but people get baptized very regularly, and we don't have to ever we've never gone.

That's because our baptism strategy works.

We just teach scripture, we teach Jesus really unashamedly, yeah, and really gently, too.

And then people are always doing that.

We trust God.

We trust God, we trust God and we trust people, but then you go four weeks without a baptism, and it's like, all right, we gotta we better it's time to build a wave pool.

No.

But I have but I'm saying I have those thoughts.

I'm like, we're not gonna build a wave pool.

No, no, no, no.

And that's because it is like those are all individuals, and and what we're trying to do is honor the Lord.

And so we can continue to honor the Lord without forcing people.

I mean, I'll get rebaptized if we really need someone to that would be that could really youth pastor gets rebaptized.

You could put that as like a clip.

That's like a Yes, that's a thing.

That's a thing.

Yeah, I don't know.

No, no, we're good.

And it it's just that part of our culture.

Do we really trust God?

Right.

Do we trust his timing?

And you know, if that's yes, then like don't try to make happen.

Sure.

I actually told this to a pastor that I was I was friends with, and we had kind of some pretty big differences, and some stuff was going on in his church that I didn't think was and we had a relationship where we could talk about this.

And I said, Man, I feel like you're trying to make this is very churchy language, but he speaks this language, so I had to sort of his hands we try to use like normal speak.

Sure.

But I'm talking to other pastors.

So I said, I think you're trying to make happen in the flesh what can only happen in the spirit.

Like you're trying to force spiritual growth fast in people, and you're trying to do it, and everything you're doing is well-intended, sure.

But you're trying to make this happen, you're trying to manufacture it, and this is stuff that only the spirit can grow in time.

And what was happening as a result is this people were just like feeling really run down, and they're not doing enough, and that's leading to just major burnout discouragement.

And he's like, Because they're not doing the thing.

And I'm like, well, this let them take their time.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So yeah.

So trust God, trust people.

We'll do that with money, we'll do that with baptisms too.

With baptisms too?

Um, unless it goes eight weeks, and then we will we'll just pull out all the stops.

We'll just close our doors.

We'll just involuntary involuntary baptisms.

It just water just comes down.

We had a thousand baptisms.

Mandatory baptisms.

We always joke about it, but mandatory baptisms, or I think even just uh unwhat would the like you didn't even know you were gonna get baptized.

Surprise baptisms.

I'm saying we just have a bunch of water in the ceiling, an ambush baptism.

An ambush, and then we go a thousand people in his hands.

If there's enough water, it is.

That's true.

I mean, the cleanup will be a disaster.

Warren will have a very rough month.

But uh I mean, a thousand people got baptized.

Thanks for listening.

Yeah, absolutely.

We'll trust the Lord, trust people.

And if you uh want to get baptized or have made that decision uh to follow Jesus, get baptized here or elsewhere.

And don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe uh to the podcast and so to our YouTube channel.

Um hit that, smash that bell, ring that thing, and uh we'll see you next time.

Bye.

Bye.