Tag: Baptism

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Seeking Invitation  

Seeking Invitation


This 2024 Baptism Report is by Crossover, the national Baptist ministry dedicated to equipping churches with resources, training, and encouragement to help Australian Baptists share Jesus effectively. 

With a 42% increase in baptisms over the last 2 years, are Baptists ready for 2025? Last year, Australian Baptist Ministries and Crossover recorded a total of 3,836 baptisms in Australia. That’s a 6.5% increase over 2023’s remarkable number – essentially a 42% increase in two years. That is truly remarkable! 

Baptisms were reported by State: 1 
– 1,134 in Victoria
– 1,073 in NSW/ACT 
– 858 in Queensland 
– 396 in WA 
– 350 in SA/NT 
– 25 in Tasmania. 

Crossover’s prayerful goal is to see twice as many baptisms in 2030 as in 2020. This would require 7.2% cumulative growth each year, represented by the line on this graph. As of now, they are 77 baptisms ahead of schedule! (Perhaps God’s schedule is a steeper line.)

Can We Keep It Up?

Perhaps we should ask whether we can stop it? There are significant signs of a new season in the wider culture, signalled by an increased openness to Christianity, particularly among Gen Z.  

Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptised? Acts 8:36 

Arguably, a few key factors will determine the extent to which our movement will reap this harvest.
These include: 
– Can we identify and remove stumbling blocks that stand in the way of people moving toward Christianity?  
– Are we too selective in whom we invite and include, or reluctant to extend grace? 
– Is there any ‘elder brother’ in us? 
– Can the Baptist movement pivot quickly enough from a defensive stance, built up over decades, to a mode of opportunity?  
– Can Baptists swing from a pessimistic mindset into making hay while the sun shines?

Attending to the Basics

Baptism numbers are not only correlated to the ebbs and flows of wider culture, but more directly to what our churches prioritise. They are highly correlated to invitations – to read the Bible together, to Alpha, to church, and to entrust and submit oneself to Christ in baptism.

‘Invitation should be our watchword across the rest of the decade.’

Baptism Resources

Crossover is continuing to invest in baptism resources. Such as, a new booklet for kids and youth, and the Count Me In brochure being translated into a whole range of other languages. There’s also National Baptism Week continues to spotlight our privilege and responsibility to invite more and more people into life in God’s kingdom. Finally, stay tuned also for a major new evangelism training course being developed for release later in the year.) 

  1. Each association gathers data as best it can from a dispersed movement, and some conservative estimation forms part of the total figure. ↩︎

February is a great month for churches to decide whether they’ll participate in the Australian Baptist Easter Offering. The Easter Offering is an expression of gratitude for Jesus and a commitment to unity as we work together to share His message with others.

Seeking Invitation

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The Turning of the Tide?

book with pen and graph for sacred agents crossover

Sacred Agents

Andrew Turner of Crossover reflects in his Sacred Agents blog.

I blinked and had to look at the number a second time: 34 percent! Each year we gather the number of baptisms reported by Australian Baptist state associations, and there was a 34 percent increase from 2022 to 2023. Wow! But what to make of it? 

It could be a whole range of things. Perhaps Australian Baptists got a whole lot better at reporting! (I imagine plenty of baptisms go un-counted, and while that’s frustrating for statisticians, it’s rather how things should be in a decentralised movement like ours.) 

Or was it a post-Covid bump? Possibly, but I’m not convinced. Was it our National Baptism Week initiative? No, given the six-month lag in collecting the numbers, they’ll show up next year. I had been expecting a rise of over 20 percent simply based on what I was hearing anecdotally from pastors and leaders. But 34 percent is remarkable – what could possibly explain it? 

Is the wave of baptisms another indication of the ‘turning of the tide’?

Could It Possibly Be Jesus?

Well, I think the answer could possibly be Jesus. Why on earth would so many people want to be baptised? Hang on, why would they not? Let’s remember that belonging to God’s family through faith in Christ is the normal and sensible thing given the unfolding of his kingdom, the place in it he offers, and the promise of his Spirit! We can get lost in studying the tea leaves of culture and economy to see whether people will or won’t like Jesus – and find that we believe more in the power of culture and economy than in the power of the gospel to captivate people of all cultures and economies. 

That said, I do wonder whether wave of baptisms is another indication of the ‘turning of the tide.’ The church in the West has long been adjusting to the end of Christendom and the loss of (mandatory) popularity that entailed. Many have become resigned to endless decline – a narrative that’s entrenched itself even as church participation has increased. 

New Theist Movement

As Western culture increasingly becomes a spiritual desert, however, should we be surprised that spiritual thirst increases?

As Western culture increasingly becomes a spiritual desert, however, should we be surprised that spiritual thirst increases? Along with stories of baptisms, I’ve been inundated with stories of ‘gate crashers’ – people (especially young adults) walking into churches that neither advertised nor invited them – and asking to be introduced to Jesus and Christianity.  

Ten years ago the ‘New Atheist Movement’ held the floor among Western intellectuals, but it has died much faster than any church it mocked, and in its place we now see the ‘New Theist Movement’ – including such opinion-leaders as Jordan Peterson, Tom Holland and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (now openly a Christian). For more on this see Justin Brierley’s The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God book and podcast.  

So are we seeing the turning of the tide – even the beginnings of revival? It’s 20 years too early to say. But keeping our heads – indeed keeping our eyes on Jesus – our confidence to live for and witness to him should be based on him, rather than the fickle fashions of our culture.

Let’s be absolutely confident in Christ, and in pointing people to him, regardless of whether they’re likely to applaud or imprison us. 

Andrew Turner, Director of Crossover.

Andrew Turner is the Director of Crossover.
Crossover exists to Help Australian Baptists Share Jesus.

This article appears on his Sacred Agents blog

Please support the Australian Baptist Easter Offering – which funds Crossover to Help Australian Baptists Share Jesus. For information on how to participate and run the offering, see crossover.org.au/offering.

Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash.

A turning of the tide?

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February 2024

When is a person ready for baptism?

When is a person ready for Baptism?

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The Scandal and the Wonder

Ready for Baptism? - Crossover reflection from Andrew Turner

Baptism Week

Who’s Ready for Baptism?

Andrew Turner of Crossover reflects in his Sacred Agents blog.

When is a person ready fro Baptism? Sacred Agents #121 Photo by Amonwat Dumkrut on Unsplash

I’ve been working on baptism resources lately, and it’s mainly straightforward. But there are curly issues too, like the question, “When is a person ready to be baptised?”

There are extreme answers to this. Some denominations say ‘At birth!’ Others, concerned about post-baptism sin, have concluded ‘Just before death!’ You’ve likely narrowed it down somewhat from those extremes, but the question remains.

If we baptise people on their first interest in Jesus, how do we know it isn’t merely a crush? Six weeks later they might be into Buddha or basket-weaving. It’s not a new phenomenon – the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13) speaks of flash-in-the-pan believers as one of four main types of people who hear the gospel.

But if we delay, how long? For there’s another type (thorny ground) who hang around much longer but in the end are similarly unproductive. And Jesus’ next Parable (The Wheat and Weeds) speaks to the difficulty of discerning which is which anyway.

Baptism, historically

In the 3rd to 5th Centuries, churches enrolled new believers into several years of instruction in faith and morals. Their way of life was closely observed. The final hurdle was to learn the creed and be able to recite it by heart. Then baptism. There’s something admirable about the commitment to intentional discipleship, but there’s something troubling too.

The scandal and wonder of the gospel is that people can be reconciled to God instantaneously. The returning prodigal isn’t required to spend a few years in the workers’ quarters, proving his reformation. He gets the ring of family-belonging only five minutes after turning up in rags.

The scandal and wonder of the gospel is that people can be reconciled to God instantaneously.

Andrew Turner, Crossover

Learning vs Earning

Discipleship is a process, certainly. But it’s at our peril that we shape it (or allow it to be perceived) as a staircase up to acceptance with God and inclusion with his people.

So what’s the choice? Shall we be casual, or die-hard? Lax, or strict?

It needn’t be so binary. Why not have a rigorous system for strengthening new believers, but place baptism at the start rather than the end?

There’s a new life to learn, but it’s not something we earn. Dallas Willard aptly put it, ‘Grace is not opposed to effort, it’s opposed to earning.’

How do you know if someone is ready for Baptism? Dallas Willard said: ‘Grace is not opposed to effort, it’s opposed to earning.’

When the Ethiopian eunuch says ‘There’s a pool of water – what’s to stop me being baptised?’ we don’t see Philip answering, ‘Well you’ve only passed the Isaiah exam.’ But neither does the New Testament see disciple-making as dipped-and-done. Baptism has always been an initiation – a start line.

Some will start and then stumble. But the danger of baptising someone who may fall away is vastly outweighed by the danger of withholding baptism because they might. It is best, I think, to baptise all who are willing to follow Jesus . . . straight into a supportive and disciplined community.

Andrew Turner, Director of Crossover.

Andrew Turner is the Director of Crossover.
Crossover exists to Help Australian Baptists Share Jesus.

Check out the Baptism Hub on crossover.org.au/baptism

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October/November/December 2023

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When is a person ready for baptism?

When is a person ready for Baptism?