rick warren on ways to increase your baptisms

8/12/2019 rick warren on ways to increase your baptisms

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Jon: At Saddleback church theyve baptized over 1100 people each year for the last seven years.Would you like to know how they do it? Were going to tell you right now. My name is Jon

Walker. I have the founding pastor of Saddleback with me, Rick Warren. We also have Brett

Eastman, pastor of membership, and Steve Gladen, who is the pastor of small groups. Lets talk

about the climate of baptisms at Saddleback. How do you promote baptisms at Saddleback?

Rick: The first thing youve got to do is constantly talk about the value, the purpose and thebenefits of baptism regularly in sermons. I dont just talk about baptism; I promote baptism in

my messages. And the messages doesnt have to be all about baptism. Its just anytime you

need to talk about identifying yourself as a Christian which is what baptism is. Baptism is

saying, I'm not ashamed to say I'm a believer in Jesus Christ. A little boy asked me one time,When can I get advertised? Thats pretty good. Thats what baptism is. Its an advertisement

for Jesus Christ, saying I'm not ashamed. So anytime you have that theme of identifying with

Christ no matter what youre preaching on, you bring up baptism. But you don't just bring it up.You say, Now take out a card because some of you have not taken that step yet and you need to

decide right now to be baptized. We talk about it constantly.

And usually on the weekends, the way you do that there are so many people that have made

a decision maybe earlier but have never taken thatstep of faith and just in a sense following up

the casting of a net to draw the net in. Its a very effective way to see, probably thirty percent of

our people come straight from the weekend.

They hear it multiple times. The first time you say it, they may not catch on or they may not

take that step but when theyve heard it a number of times, theyll check the card.

Jon: One of the things you guys use is music videos right?

Weve tried a number of ways to try to communicate the color and the pictures of the stories

of baptism. One of the most powerful things we have done in the last two or three years is to be

able to integrate the visual the video visual of what happens at the waters edge along withsome music.

Rick: Let me explain about that. The people listening probably dont know that our baptism

pool is not in our building. In most church the baptistery is up high behind the pulpit orsomewhere like that. In the building that we have there was no place for it. And our baptism

pool is actually a pool outside on the patio out front. Well talk about this later. We actually

have our baptism services separate from our service for a number of different reasons which we

will get into. But that means that for baptism we will need to: a, video it or, b, show it by videolive in the service. But heres an interesting thing we discovered. When you do a video and you

do a baptism, slow the picture down. It increases the ability to see the emotion on the personsface. When their face is turning slowly and you can see the smile slowly break out on their face

as they come out of the water. Often baptisms are so quick we miss it. In fact, one of mybiggest advice to pastors is put them under the water slower and bring them up slower. Were so

in a hurry that were not going to suffocate them that actually it ruins the sheer beauty and

magnitude of the picture of I'm dying with Christ and I'm being raised with Christ. And in thevideo we slow it down and we can see these people coming out of the water, the water dripping


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off their face, the smile break out. Its touching.

Not only is it the power of the moment but with the video we put it behind music. So you

have the power of a song and the power of the event itself. It also Its people know what happensin the baptism. Some people are scared to death. They see a pool of water out there and theyre

not sure whats going on.

Rick: Before we ever did that in our serviced, I was doing it in our membership class. One ofthe ways we do emphasize baptism is in our required membership class, Class 101, which is a

four-hour class that we teach once a month. One major section of that, about 25 minutes of this

class (depending on whose teaching), we talk about the when, the why, the where, the purpose,the mode all of these things. But since every membership class... Actually, when I started the

church we didnt have videotape so for the first several years we showed a slide show. We

played it to music. We actually showed a slide show in every 101 class and would play a songbehind it. It was very touching. Then of course when videotape came along we put it to music.

Showing that video in 101 takes out so many of the fears but I think one of the things you doin the weekend services, Rick, is although they may see live baptisms in the service if they havea baptistery already installed. This gives the chance to see more of the various ages and the

different types of baptisms so its helpful to keep it in front of them visually and not just

verbally.

Rick: If you do a video Id make sure you do have a balance between men and women, old andyoung, because typically many church they think baptism is something for little kids. And really

if youre going to tilt it in any way, tilt it toward men. Because men are the most likely to not

want to be baptized and if you have more men being baptized its a good value.

When were setting up the climate I think theres some tactical things a church can do too.We have a brochure on Why Be Baptized. A lot of times people dont want to stop anybodybut theyll pick a brochure up just to find out and see the scriptural backing of it. We also have

poster boards and banners and signs with peoples faces the changed lives. What were trying

to do is bring color and heart to something they think is very churchy.

Rick: The bottom line is what is attractive about baptism is changed lives. Thats what baptism

is a picture of. My life has been changed, the old has died, the new has come. There is not a

more powerful symbol in Christianity, I think, than baptism. I know communion is a powerfulpicture of the cross, but the powerful picture of changed lives is baptism.

Its clear when Christ came to this earth, He didnt tell us to remember His birth, but He didgive us two powerful signs to remember His death, burial and resurrection. Communion and

baptism.

I remember a guy that walked out of the service I'm sure it was an incredible service, you

are teaching, Rick. He was fully dressed standing in line with the rest of the people in shorts. I

said, What happened? He said, My life has been changed today and I cannot wait to tell the

world about it. He walked into the water, right down the steps, wearing clothes and even a hat.The hat could have floated away.


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Rick: That's better than the toupees weve had float away. You had a guy that did that.

It was incredible. Had one guy who had a toupee and it floated away. His kids were by the

waters edge. They said, Dad, you went in as a young man and came up as an old man!

Jon: You guys do things like lakeside baptisms, ocean baptisms.

Rick: Yes, we do. Of course we live here in California near the ocean and particularly in thesummer months well baptize down there. When we do retreats in the mountains, we baptize in

the mountains. Ive been in some very cold water in the mountains. It really doesnt matter. Its

not the water thats holy. Its the moment and the meaning thats holy. Well baptize anywhere.We have used Jacuzzis. Saddleback did not have a building for the first fifteen years. Weve

used swimming pools. Everybody in this church was baptized in a pool or Jacuzzi or spa. They

called them Jacuzzis for Jesus. Or the beach. We have used bathtubs. I remember one timethere was a woman who was dying of cancer and she had come to know Christ. As she wanted

to be baptized. Pastor Glenn went over to her house. All the family members had gathered and

her husband lovingly lifted her out of the hospital bed, carried her into the bathroom where theyhad filled the tub. Pastor Glenn baptized her there. It was a moving moment.

I think its neat about changing the environment sometimes. Sometimes you always want to

do it in the same location every single time but changing the environment. Like going to thebeach or doing it outdoors on a retreat gives people an opportunity some people a little bit

more connect with nature. I remember one day I was at one of the beach baptisms. The day wewent out there, the swells were especially large. As I was talking to this one guy, looking him in

the eye, the waves were coming in behind us, we walked out there far enough so we could lower

him down. I asked him, Have you asked Jesus Christ to be your personal savior? and I turnedaround and there was this huge wave behind us. I said, I hope so! and lowered him down in

the water and the wave took us both.

Rick: One time I was baptizing at the beach. All of a sudden we saw this crowd of people about

300 yards down the beach. They were all gathering at the shore and I didnt know what it was.

We finished baptizing, we had 16, 17 people to baptize. We got out and I walked down there.

What was it? The guy had speared a shark. He had been on the shore about two feet outlooking for clams. He said something kept hitting his foot. He finally just jabbed it with his

clam digger. He pulled it out and it was about a four-foot long gray shark. We call that the Jaws

baptism.

Jon: It sounds like youre describing a party atmosphere here. How do you keep the celebration

going?

Rick: We let them know its a very sacred moment. But we tell them to applaud! People are

taking a huge step of faith. We always let the crowd know that the people are here taking a firststep, theyve accepted Christ into their hearts. We start them off by saying applaud these people!

Its a celebration. We tell them of some comical things that have even happened. We had one

little kid come up afterwards and ask, Do you wait until every little sin bubble comes up before

you bring them back up?

Rick: It is true, you can insert humor. This is the happiest day of many peoples lives. Its their


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coming out party. Theyre coming out of the closet for Jesus. Public identification. Its notsome somber moment like a funeral. This is indication of new life in Christ. And if some people

are naturally scared of water. You want to reduce their fears. In the first place theyre afraid of

water. In the second place, they dont like the way they look when their hair is all wet. Andthree, theyre going to do it in front of a bunch of other people, many times that they dont know.

These are natural barriers. Humor relaxes people so they can enjoy the moment. Ive often said,Just as Jesus Christ was buried in the tomb for three days and then He rose on the next day, we

take a person, put them under the water, leave them there three days, then like Jesus, bring themback. Of course, they always laugh and I say, Just kidding. Making sure you were listening.

It kind of relieves a little bit of tension. Because we do want people to celebrate new life in

Christ.

Jon: Another thing you do is celebrate holidays or anniversaries and stuff.

Rick: We do.

Every time you trip across somebody standing next to each other ask, Who is this withyou? Whether its a newlywed couple or somebody who looks like theyve been married a fewyears you just ask them: How long has it been youve been married? Celebrate that. Cheer on

years of marriage. Or to be married. We say, Were a pastor. We could baptize you one

moment, then look at the guy especially, Would you like us to also marry you?

Rick: There are three kinds of celebrations. Theres the personal celebration of the life of theperson that was just being baptized. Second, the celebration days of the year. For instance,

Mothers Day, Christmas, Easter things like that when youre going to have relatives in town.

Always baptize when relatives are in town because relatives want to be there. So we always usebaptisms on special days when youre more likely to have like Christmas, Easter, Mothers Day.

The third kind of special days are special days in the life of the church. We always baptize onspecial days in the life of the church. For instance, the day before we moved from Trabuco HillsHigh School to our property we said were going to bury a time capsule of everybody who was

here for the first day of moving onto the land. And in that time capsule theres going to be the

names of all the members who were the pioneers of Saddleback before we actually owned land.

We had about 6000 people in attendance at that time. To be a member, of course, you have to bebaptized. Actually the Sunday before we moved on to this property we baptized over 400 people

on a single day. We actually started the baptisms at the first service at 8:00 in the morning. I

preached three services and they baptized continuously until noon. When I got out at noon, Iwent back and baptized another 50-75 people. Same thing when we moved out of the tent into

this building our ministry worship center. We said were going to bury a time capsule of

everybody who was here who helped build this first building. Who wants to be baptized on thefirst day of the building? That was the opening of our baptism pool. Again, we baptized over

450 people that day. Ill never forget. The line was so long. It was going to take hours. We had

three pastors actually in the pool baptizing continuously. I got out and walked down the aisleand personally shook everybodys hand. It looked like it was going a quarter of a mile. I know

thats an exaggeration but it went on forever!

Capitalizing on those different high days, like even after a good sermon series that mightfinish strong. Or new years is a great time. You say, You want to start next year strong? Why

don't you take that next great step of faith and join us? Were going to have a special baptism.


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Rick: We invent days. We invent special days just to do it. A lot of times when we come backfrom the summer as we start off in the fall Ill do a message like Its Time to Get Going. Or

Its Time to Finish What You Start. What do you need to finish that you have started? You

gave your life to Christ. Have you taken the next step? A lot of people dont understand thatbaptism is the next step.

You want to jump-start those procrastinators. Also the great thing about the climate of

salvation is you want to empower people to invite people. We have a couple coming up thisweekend. Its their spiritual birthday. Its also their 17

thwedding anniversary. They have

invited 95 people to attend the service and then join them at the waters edge and watch them be

baptized. Then go out for their anniversary celebration. Youre empowering them. We do thatin 101. We give out invitations and we let people know, Dont come alone. This is a time to

bring people just like to a birthday party.

Rick: Coming back to this celebration atmosphere. Nobody wants to come to a funeral. But

everybody wants to come to a party. When you have a party, a celebration atmosphere, theyre

excited to bring their friends. And by the way, one of the things we do is always hug people.Coming into the baptism pool and going out, always hug them. We want them to feel loved. Ialways say the test of unconditional love is if youll hug them before they get dried off.

You let them know its a special thing. I'm willing to get wet with you.

When you introduce the celebration, remind that all the angels in heaven celebrate when oneperson comes to Christ. Set up the scene where they go down into the water that every one of us

could at least be angelic for a moment and celebrate when they come up and out of the water.

With the celebration also comes the memories. One of the great things you can do is give

one of those little hand towels with your church logo on it. Or capture the moment with apicture. You just want to give people the memories. Also when their friends, their kids and theirfamily see those momentos its an opportunity to witness and to share what happened at that

particular point.

Jon: Youre working on an idea like a party-in-a-box, arent you?

Yes, were trying to get this so the whole invitation process is simple. We can give them a

box with the invitations in it, with all the next steps that they need to do. All they have to do isthink of the people and well handle the rest of it.

Rick: Pastor, let your staff be creative. Theyll always come up with lots of good ideas. Wemay have 40 or 50 on this tape but by this time next year we will have tried another 20 or 30

more.

How significant this is to us because he creates an environment for us to be a little crazy!

We try these things. We may have 40 a year but theres another 40 that totally fail.

Rick: Were not afraid to fail.


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Ive been doing this pastor of membership of three years. Were responsible for all thebaptisms. At three years we were kind of flat in terms of how baptisms were going. We pulled

together like ten pastors and said, If we were to start over, what would be a couple ideas that we

could come up with that might help? On those white boards we ended up with about three fullpages of ideas that wed never even talked about. Its fun to think of empowering your staff to

look over maybe what we have given them

Rick: And if you dont have a staff, do it with the lay leaders, your volunteers.

Jon: Brett, I heard a story a couple weeks ago that there was a whole small group out here. They

were all applauding, just happy that their small group members were being baptized. How didyou go about getting that done?

Brett: This is a fun new trend. I think one of the things we had done for years is one of thepastors would baptize the people who needed to be baptized. Yet one of the things we started

discovering early on as Rick empowered lay people to participate in baptisms and to train them

ion how to do that. We started in the 101 class where we really had the largest number of peoplewho stepped forward to be baptized to encourage the people to go back to whoever is theirspiritual parent or someone who played a significant role or it could be their natural parent who

made a mark in their lives. The bottom line was who they started going back to were their small

group leaders. So now we encourage the small group leaders to be on the other side of theperson to lower them into the water along with the pastor, signifying that moment. Now what

were seeing is entire small groups challenging members after they hear somebody elses storythey say, Ive never been baptized either. And they end up coming the following week. So

this is a fun new trend were seeing the entire group

Rick: At the last Purpose Driven Life Gathering, I challenged each group to go back to their

group and go around saying, Has anybody not been baptized yet? Then all of you cometogether next week and bring that person and be there as witnesses for their baptism.

Youre empowering the group leader because they know their sheep best and they know

which ones havent taken the next step. One of the powerful things that were doing too is when

we have the people in the water were saying, Whos your small group leader? if they arent inthe water with them, if they just happen to be out there watching we bring them straight into the

water. And every small group leader its a privilege. They will walk in fully clothed to be with

their sheep. Then get next to their sheep and their wool gets wet too.

Two weekends ago there was a guy named Rich who went into the water. I asked him,

Who had a significant impact in your life? He said, That guy right there. It was his smallgroup leader. And another group started hooting and hollering. I said whats going on? Why

arent they setting together? He said, They dont even know each other. That group is my

recovery group. I got in, came to Christ and they walked me through my first season atSaddleback. And Steve led that. I said, Steve, it seems to me it would be appropriate for you

to be in the water to help him. What do the rest of you guys think? He takes his shoes off in a

second and walks into the water and stands next to him. Then I said, Whos this guy? He

said, Hes Joe and hes leading a new couples group I'm in. I said, It seems appropriate thatJoes in the water as well. He immediately slips his shoes off and walks down in to the water.


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Both of those guys had the privilege of baptizing their brother in Christ. One led him to Christand the other is helping him grow in Christ. It is a powerful picture.

Every group leader always thanks us for doing that. At first its edgy, especially when weredoing our night baptisms during the winter and its cold and all that. But every one of them

when they see the power in the moment of that person coming up out of the water and beingthere for this most significant moment in this persons public proclamation of what their faith

means to them, they were there. And when they see the picture too, on the web

Rick: The bottom line is that small groups are a powerful tool of helping people realize the

importance of baptism. This is for discussion on another tape. We do an annual campaign atSaddleback. Its usually 60 days. It has been 90 days campaign of some kind of growth. One

year many years ago it was called I Love My Church campaign. Another was called I want to

Grow campaign. Its a spiritual growth campaign where we emphasize, take your next step inspiritual growth. Two years ago we called it the millennial member campaign because it was

coming up right before the year 2000. This last year we did 50 Days of Faith. This year were

actually going to do 50 Days of Love. As I said, that's a whole other discussion of how we dothose campaigns. But in that campaign, one of the things we do is we emphasize the variousTake Your Next Step of spiritual growth. For some people its Be Baptized. If all youve done

is come to Christ, now you need to be baptized. We did that in the Millennial member

campaign. We also talked about getting into a small group. We talked about having quiet timeand different things like that and other spiritual steps. But that step is a key component of our

annual what we call our fall campaign which is a growth period.

Jon: That's a great hook. You guys put hooks in the water all the time. I was here when you

were talking about the millennial campaign and it was really tugging on my heart even thoughId already been baptized. Thats really what youre talking about building this enthusiasm,

dropping a bunch of hooks in the water.

And its empowering people. Family members small group members, to help people do the

things they know they ought to do but sometimes theyre just scared to do.

Jon: Speaking about family members. Tell me how you involve family members in thebaptismal process.

Again when we send out the invitations the first people you should include are you familymembers. Let your immediate family be part of the process. Weve even had ex-spouses be

there. It shows the healing power of the grace in the cross. We have them introduce whos with

them. Theyll say, Thats my wife right there. Thatsmy ex-wife. When they know they canshare that with their family

Rick: And they may have come to Christ since their divorce.

Its like one of the baptisms I did. I was facing the group that was going to be baptized. I

asked them, Who has had a spiritual impact in your life, that has helped mark you and helped

shape you for who you are? Id like you to ask that person to consider participating with you inthe water. Point to the person. There were probably seven or eight people in front of me. The

all pointed to somebody behind me and immediately people behind me started taking their shoes


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off, their belts off. One guy was an Italian man. He barely spoke English. He was this onewomans father. They lived in Italy when they started. She brought him into the water. She

said, He raised me as a very faithful girl to go to the church that I went to. I think it was

Catholic. She said, This is my way of honoring what he began. The man did not speak anyEnglish but the smile on his face spoke a thousand words. It was incredible.

Sometimes you get people when youre interviewing them and youre ready to baptize them

they don't have a small group and maybe their family isnt there. It may seem awkward at onepoint but thats when you look to the church family that's there: Who is here to support this

person? And theres shouting and then you look at the person and say, By the way, its your

obligation to take them all out to lunch now.

Rick: We encourage families to go out to lunch and celebrate. While were talking about

families, you mentioned a Catholic family, what happens with the people who were baptized asan infant? And of course, living in California, about 40% of the population were raised Catholic

because the Mexican missionaries actually founded California. So theres a very strong Catholic

population out here. A lot of people were baptized or confirmed or sprinkled as babies. Thenthey grow up, they come to Saddleback, they find Christ or they found Christ in another churchand then they came to Saddleback but theyve never been baptized the way Jesus says - the right

mode, the right method, the right meaning, the right time which are all essentials to New

Testament baptism. Often their hang up isnt I dont want to be baptized, its I dont want todishonor my parents. Its really a cultural thing, not a theological thing. It has nothing to do

with theology, it has to do with family ties. They understand this is biblical baptism, that JesusHimself was an adult when He was baptized. So what do you do? What you do is you talk about

the importance of being baptized the way Jesus was without dishonoring their parents. The way

I say it is Ill ask in class 101 How many of you were baptized as babies? Typically a third ormore of the people will raise their hands. Ill say, Thats typical. In fact, I was baptized in a

catholic hospital as a baby myself. I was born in a hospital and they baptized all the babies thereinstantly. The truth is though I don't remember that baptism. It may have been significant tothose nuns at that hospital but I dont even remember it for me personally. So it wasnt my

decision. What were talking about is your decision for Christ. What that does is we say theres

a difference between a baptism of confirmation and a baptism of confession and conversion. The

baptism of confirmation is a Christian tradition but its not in the Bible. Were not invalidatingor putting their parents down they were doing what they believed in. But were talking about in

the New Testament the way Jesus said I am publicly as an adult making my statement of faith for

Christ.

Jon: Lets talk about children. How do you with children who come to Christ, how do you get

them baptized?

Ill share a personal example because it was just last season that my kids were baptized here.

We have five kids and in fact all five of them have been baptized here at this church. That'sprobably one of the things I'm most grateful for as we look at the contributions that Saddleback

has made in our family. Theres a class called First Step. Its taught by the childrens pastor.

Its a great class. In their particular case they have material and information about this. Theres

videos and illustrations that kids can understand. They use a skateboard illustration showinghow if youre going one way you turn it around 180 degrees. The spirit of the class is they walk

you through it. Then they do an individual interview. My wife and I happen to have identical


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: Thats a reason to consider the frequency of baptisms. What baptisms are doing is like whatyou do in the service, the equivalent of testimonies.

Rick: One of the reasons we cant do it in the services is we have so many. As you pointed outweve got 7,418 people in the last seven years. Thats 1,1o0 a year. I dont know how that

averages out but its like 20 a week. Literally you would take a major portion of your serviceevery week just doing baptisms. Smaller churches could clearly do it more often in their

services.

We used to do them once a month so we would maybe do them 12, 20 times a year. Now

this last year we did 60 or so baptisms. Its the individual times. We dont want it to be likecattle.

Rick: The more hooks you put into the water, the more people that are going to be there. Whenyou baptize every month, if you miss this months baptism, you have to go 60 days till the next

one.

You want to give them multiple opportunities not only so they can take their next step butalso so you don't have so many people. The baptism needs to be personal.

: Brett and I love the most is when there are like 15 so you can spend the time with them. Itswhen you get to ballistic numbers its a four hour event!

Little things on this bring the heart and help to keep the value high. Interviewing the people

before they are baptized and just asking them how they make a decision to trust Christ with their

lives or how long theyve been coming to the church, what is it that they love about the church.After they share ask them who it is theyre here with today, is there anybody here with them.

Most of the time its family or a few friends. Once in a while it maybe like, It was Sally Mae atwork. She invited me to church. Its that Sally Mae that you want to go crazy over. Whereis Sally? Can you stand? And everybody give her a hand to affirm the value of bringing

people.

Rick: Youve just affirmed witnessing. Whatever you want people to do, make heroes of.When people bring people to Christ, you make a hero of them.

Jon: Logistically, you guys have a lot going on here. Its taken a lot of volunteers to help youout because you dont have the pastoral staff to help you do all this. Tell me how you utilize

volunteers for this.

Rick: In the first place, let me say, theres no way we could do 60, 70 baptisms a year without

volunteers. Forget it!

What is great about the team of people who work in the baptisms is we have multiple teams,

people who help out, just serving the people that want to sign up. They help people fill out the

cards. We have photographers that are there to capture the moment. We have videographers.

These are all just volunteers. Theyre not professional photographers or professionalvideographers. Theyre just people who can hold a camera and can help to capture the moment.

I can still remember the person leading the photography with our baptism people. She found out


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that none of the photographs were in a group. She thought, This is my group. They builtcommunity. Theyre like the green berets. Theyre always ready for Pastor Rick to say, After

this service were going to baptize even though were not ready. Theyre always ready. They

have formed their own community. We have instilled that into them and theyre there during therainy times and the beach times and every other time.

Rick: With the volunteers, one of the things we do is have matching shirts for them all. When

you walk up to the baptism you want to know, Who should I speak to? If youve got a lot ofpeople then you do need multiple people to give information to.

We also have some people who are on our Fresh Start for God team there. People are askingquestions. Because of the background they come from they think Ill just do it no matter what.

We had one guy on his card where it says when they got baptized and where. One guy put

Earth. At least were on the right planet. He turned it over to the Fresh Start team. They wereable to chat with him and help him solidify that moment and led him to Christ.

Rick: Thats a good point. Baptism is often a good time to lead other people to Christ. And youwill have people who want to be baptized who dont know the Lord. You have to make sure thatthey know the Lord. If theyre ready to be baptized theyre ready to come to Christ. Thats

almost like having the cart before the horse. If theyre willing to get into the water and get wet

for Jesus even if they dont understand, certainly theyre going to open their life to Christ onceyou explain it to them.

Jon: Lets talk about some of the uses of media that you use with baptism. Rick, I think one of

the first ideas that you implemented was bringing a photographer in.

Rick: Yes. Weve always taken a picture of every single person who was baptized. Then we

would print up a beautiful little leatherette folder that we would slip the baptism picture in andput their baptism certificate in. It really looks first class. It costs a couple bucks a piece to makethese nice little things. Theyre embossed. In fact, I had a lady in the church, she and her

husband were getting ready to go overseas and she had to get a passport. She couldnt find her

birth certificate so she took her Saddleback baptism certificate down to the immigration office.

They said, This looks official, and they gave her citizenship just on the basis of her baptism. Isaid, Now, if you could only get a tax write off it would be great.

I had a guy on the patio say, Nice to see you again! Ive been going to bed with you forthe last six months. I have the picture of you baptizing me by my bed and it reminds me of that

moment in my life.

Its very common for people to come up on the patio and say, I see you every morning.

The power of making that such an attractive leatherette case is that it also gives them the

opportunity to witness when people come to their home. A lot of the people have them on theirmantles. People say, Whats that? Thats when I publicly professing Jesus Christ as my Lord

and Savior at my church.

Rick: If you just give them a certificate, theyre probably just going to put it in a box but if youput it in a nice binder with their picture and a certificate and I sign it, theyre going to put it out.


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Jon: Lets talk about some of the actual technical aspects of getting people baptized, some of thethings you guys do here.

Rick: One of the things is we have what we call Nike baptisms, which means we just do it. Alot of times after a service Ill say, Youve never been baptized? The water is warm. Just go

out there right now. We have clothes for you. We have counselors to help you. We have peoplewho will explain everything to you. Just walk outside. You can sign up and be baptized today.

We have found that a sizeable number of people intend to be baptized but if they plan it theynever do it. Its Ill do it next month, but the next month they forget. But in the spur of the

moment if its already there. Thats a great technique just to have people ready to do it. So you

constantly emphasize this next step of once youve committed your life to Christ, go on out andbe baptized.

And you start a new support group for people with impulsive disorders! I remember the firsttime you did this, Rick. We talked about it, how is it going to go. That one weekend we had

about thirty different people that did this. We had no idea the kind of response wed have. We

just bought a bunch of athletic shorts and a regular shirt and a terry cloth towel. This one guynamed Jake came out. He was in his mid forties and had been going through a lot in his life. Hesaid I just wanted today to mark my life and say, God, I want to follow You. He has since

gone on to lead one of our small groups here at Saddleback.

Rick: A couple practical things since youre asking about this. One, make sure youve got a

good sound system. If youre going to have testimonies, if they cant hear it, its worthless. Sowhether your baptism is within your church building or outside it, outdoors, at the lake,

whatever, you need to figure out some kind of sound system so everybody can hear the story.

Another thing if youre doing baptism, make sure the waters warm. Not too warm. Make sureits chlorinated. I had one time where they had scalding water and actually had a pastor friend

who actually wore waders over a robe into a baptism pool. When he first got in he didnt realizehow hot it was because he was wearing waders. But it got warmer and warmer. He startedspeaking and said, Of course Jesus went down to the Jordan to be baptized by John. By this

time it sunk it and he said, But it wasnt this hot!

I think the classic questions that people are going to have you want to answer. Or theircommon fears, common questions. You want to take away every excuse: the waters too cold.

No, its warm. I dont have clothes with me. We have clothes for you.

Rick: Now we actually have heaters outside that people can stand under. Well baptize all

through the year. In the winter, theyre standing outside, waiting to be baptized. Theyre down

to a pair of shorts and a shirt. A lot of good lighting if youre outside.

Cause a lot of churches are starting Saturday night services. So dont take an opportunity

away like its too dark outside. Light the place up

: After your 101 class or your membership class, thats the best time to be able to do it. We had

been offering baptisms like on any given Sunday. Now we always host baptisms immediately

following the weekend that we teach class 101. We encourage those people that have finishedthat class on this particular month to be a part of a special one-time community that will be there

for each other at the waters edge. Its a very effective way to get them to take the next step.


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: We talk about services, but Class 101 is a powerful means. You always want to get their next

step in the current step theyre in. And to be able to use The Next Step card that weve

developed so that people will sense the commitment. We have between 40-60% of every 101class that signs up for baptism. A lot of times they were just ignorant about it. They didnt

know.

Jon: Is there anything that we havent covered that one of you would like to mention here?

Rick: Id like to say two things as we close. One, I would say to those of you who are pastors

consider alternatives to your baptism pool in your church building. Some of them are kind ofsmall, kind of outdated, theyre stuck over in a corner or way back. It doesnt look like a party

atmosphere. It looks like a performance. People cant get up close. Our baptism pool, people

can actually stand all around it so that they can get up really close to the people. The stepping inand the stepping out is not like youre coming from some place that nobody knows where you

are and youre going to someplace where nobody knows where you are. Its less frightening and

scary. I would consider alternatives to just the baptism pool in the building itself. The secondthing Id say as we close is one of the big attractions in post modernism today, this newergeneration, is people are more open to symbols than they were years ago. People are more open

to mysticism than they were twenty years ago when I started this church. People are more open

to spirituality than they were twenty years go. I have found that while people are now lookingfor symbolism in worship and theyre very open to that God gave us two really great symbols

communion and baptism. Do not be ashamed in using those. We use them all the time in veryseeker sensitive services. Theyre not insensitive. Theyre seeker sensitive. Every time we do a

baptism, people come to Christ. Every time we do a communion, people come to Christ.

Id like to pray for the pastors as we close.

Prayer:

Father, I thank You for the pastors and the ministers who are listening to this tape. I pray

that You would bless their church with people coming to Christ and people taking that

wonderful step of baptism saying, I'm not ashamed to identify myself with Jesus Christ.May You give a great harvest of people publicly identifying themselves with You in the year

ahead. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

This has been Ministry Conversations from Saddleback Valley Community Church in Lake

Forest, California. If theres a topic youd like to see covered in future tapes drop us a line at

[email protected]. And dont forget to sign up for Rick Warrens Ministry Toolbox. Its afree weekly email newsletter with tips from Rick and articles from pastors all around the world.

You can sign up for it through the website, pastors.com. Thanks for listening and may God

bless you with many baptisms this year.

rick warren on ways to increase your baptisms

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