More than 7,700 people were baptized along Huntington Beach on May 3, thanks to the outreach efforts of Baptize California (formerly Baptize SoCal). About 30,000 people representing more than 500 churches gathered to worship and witness the baptisms.
Thanks to continued growth, Baptize California is becoming Baptize America, and the interdenominational nonprofit has even bigger plans for next month.
On June 8, Pentecost Sunday, Baptize America is organizing “the largest synchronized day of water baptism in world history.” Hundreds of churches are expected to participate in what Baptize America calls “the fulfillment of the Great Commission.”
How Baptize America Came To Be
Since launching two years ago, Baptize SoCal has baptized almost 24,000 people into the Christian faith. At the initial event in May 2023, more than 4,000 baptisms occurred at Pirates Cove Beach, site of the Jesus People Movement baptisms of the 1960s and 1970s.
Organizer Mark Francey said the kickoff event represented an act of stepping out in obedience. Francey, who pastors Oceans Church in Orange County with wife Rachelle, said in 2023 that they knew “God’s people would rally” around the movement.
Back then, the couple had a clear blueprint: Expand the 2024 effort statewide and the 2025 effort nationwide. They dreamed of eventually “hosting hub locations from coast to coast where people can gather and be baptized,” Mark Francey said in 2023. “God is not done with America, and we are convinced if we can unite the church and turn fully back to Jesus, he will heal our land,” he added.
In May 2024, Baptize California celebrated more than 6,000 baptisms at Huntington Beach. Another 6,200 people were baptized across the state.
The 7,752 baptisms at Huntington Beach on May 3, 2025, were a foretaste of what’s coming on Pentecost, according to Francey. “The main reason why we did this event in California a month early,” said the pastor, “is so that all of the momentum from people getting excited about what God’s doing in California would actually transfer into local churches, that they could host it…all over America.”
Francey described a variety of people getting baptized earlier this month, including someone wearing a house-arrest ankle monitor. “I saw homeless people…people in wheelchairs that [got] pushed to the sand…old, young, all different ethnicities, all different political persuasions,” he recalled. “It was a beautiful thing to see what Jesus did at the beach the other day.”
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