SPRINGDALE, Ark. (BP) – Large numbers of baptisms continue to make a splash throughout the Southern Baptist Convention as several churches baptized hundreds of people during Sunday services in recent weeks.
Cross Church in northwest Arkansas and Lakepointe Church in Dallas combined to baptize more than 500 people during Sunday services May 2.
Lakepointe announced on its Facebook page it had baptized 312 people among six campuses, and Cross Church said it baptized 211 people during two morning services and a men’s conference later that night.
Nick Floyd, senior pastor at Cross Church, said both the credit and the glory should go to God.
“I think it was really just a move of the Spirit of God like I’ve never seen before in my lifetime,” Floyd said. “He’s just compelling people to be obedient to Christ. I don’t know how to describe it other than just to say, if you were in the room that day, you would have felt the presence of the Spirit of God in an amazing way.”
Floyd said the baptisms included people making decisions that day to follow Christ, as well as others who had previously come to salvation – some after a previous baptism.
God continued to move the following week as people continued to contact Cross Church wanting to be baptized but didn’t want to wait until Sunday.
The church baptized 23 people throughout the next week and baptized 63 more Sunday (May 9). Floyd estimates around 85 percent of those baptized were adults.
“It’s not just a Cross Church story, it really is a Holy Spirit story, and I don’t really know how to process it all even a few days later,” Floyd said. “You can’t just convince that many people to take a step of obedience towards the Lord.”
Floyd said it is amazing to see a move of the Spirit in churches all across the SBC after the difficult year that 2020 was for many churches. The spiritual readiness of people, brought on by the harsh reality of the COVID-19 pandemic is a factor Floyd believes has been crucial for this movement of God.
“One thing a staff pastor of ours said recently was people have been locked up at home and all they’ve been thinking about is death,” Floyd said. “You give them the hope of the Gospel and I think people are just responding. I don’t think we can underplay what the last year has done to spiritually prepare people’s hearts for the Gospel. I can’t explain it all.”
Lakepointe and Cross Church are not the only churches in the SBC to experience a large number of baptisms in recent weeks.
Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn., has seen a continual revival the past few months with 1,180 people being baptized since the end of December.
The Annual Church Profile lists Long Hollow as having baptized 162 people in 2018 and 222 in 2019. The church has experienced more than double that number of baptisms in the past four months.
Long Hollow’s senior pastor, Robby Gallaty, was the guest speaker at Cross Church May 2 for both the Sunday morning services and a men’s conference.
After initially turning down Floyd’s offer to speak at the men’s conference, Gallaty changed his mind and really felt the Lord compelling him to come speak at Cross Church.
“This is a genuine move of God. He gets all the glory,” Gallaty told BP last month. “The Lord has shown me that prayer births revival, and revival births prayer. It’s like adding logs to the fire.”
Floyd said the revival taking place at Long Hollow can be an inspiration and an encouragement both for Cross Church and for churches all over the world that God is still at work at all times.
“I think there’s a there’s a sense of when you see the Lord moving in other people’s churches, or in their lives, there’s something attractive and makes you say, ‘I want to experience a move of God,’” Floyd said. “I know that’s what I want to see, and we just tried to build an expectation in our church before these services that the Lord was going to move.”
Gallaty emphasizes not the wisdom of man, but the power of prayer as the key for a Spirit-filled revival.
“I really believe that if all of us, as pastors, begin to press in and seek the Lord in prayer, calling out for God to move in our churches, that’s a prayer He’s going to answer,” he said.
