On Sunday, Dec. 3, First Baptist Church (more commonly known as Upstate Church) of Simpsonville, South Carolina, experienced an “overwhelming” response and baptized 141 people across six church campuses.
“We have never seen anything like this in our church,” Senior Pastor Wayne Bray told Baptist Press. “To think that 141 people followed the Lord in baptism is truly unimaginable for me. I feel so blessed to be the pastor of Upstate Church.”
Upstate Church Made Plans for an Emphasis on Baptisms; God Had Even Bigger Plans
Church leadership planned an evangelistic series on church ordinances leading up to this event. The series included key truths surrounding the practices of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. To place special emphasis on baptism during the services on Dec. 3, the church decided to postpone the monthly baptisms scheduled in November.
“Our hope was to have someone scheduled for baptism in every service on every campus,” said Bray. “By Friday, Dec. 1, we already had 86 baptisms scheduled across all our campuses. This was overwhelming, but it gave us even more confidence to preach the Gospel on Sunday, expecting the Holy Spirit to move.”
“We had 55 additional decisions (Sunday) across all locations,” reported Bray, for a total of 141 baptisms.
Church leadership planned to alter the usual order of service to allow flexibility for responses on Sunday. The pastors at each church location “presented a clear Gospel message” before praise and worship “and called for a response at two different points in the sermon,” Bray explained. Then, there was time for the pastors to meet personally with each candidate and assess his or her readiness for baptism.
The two-part invitation intentionally included both those who had never made a profession of faith and those who had been attending but had never been baptized.
“This allowed time for all spontaneous decisions to be confirmed by counselors prior to being baptized,” Bray said. “We were very careful to make sure every decision was confirmed, turning away multiple people who needed more time to talk through their decision.”
“We don’t believe that God’s recent activity in our church is an accident of an exception in his eternal plan,” Bray told Fox News Digital. “In many ways, we credit his recent work to a radical balance of truth and grace, exemplified by Jesus in John 1:14.”
Upstate Church posted photos of the baptisms from various locations. Those baptized were shown praying, smiling, and rejoicing as they wore shirts saying “Raised to Life.”
Dozens of friends and family at the church have interacted with the post with encouragement and praise to God. One said, “We need a whole lot more of this. Glory be to God.”
 of Simpsonville, South Carolina, experienced an "overwhelming" response with 141 baptisms across six church campuses.){kind=link}