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1-844-PUSHPAY A playbook for baptizing 70,000+ people
Discover how Baptize the World grew into a global movement of 71,000+ baptisms, and how Pushpay Giving powers the generosity that makes it all possible.
A baptism is free. Baptizing 12,000 people across a state in one weekend is not.
That’s what happened in California over Pentecost weekend in 2024, in 54 of the state’s 56 counties. Oceans Church—the Orange County church that started the whole thing—covered around 85% of a bill that ran close to a million dollars. Donors covered the rest.
Somebody gave so that could happen. Thousands of somebodies, actually.
Baptize the World has now seen more than 71,000 baptisms across 1,600-plus churches. They run their donor management through Pushpay Giving, but even before we joined forces, we’ve been cheering their team on.Â
Pirate’s Cove, and then everywhere
It started in 2023 at Pirate’s Cove, the stretch of Southern California coastline where the Jesus Movement baptisms happened in the seventies. Oceans Church, led by Pastor Mark Francey, called it Baptize SoCal. Around 4,100 people went under the water that Pentecost Sunday.
The next spring they took it statewide. Baptize California pulled in more than 300 congregations and baptized upwards of 12,000 people over the weekend.
All 50 states participated the following year under the name Baptize America, which came in somewhere around 26,000 baptisms.
This past May, on Pentecost Sunday, it went global. The livestream anchored out of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
Four years, and the thing that hasn’t changed is who does the baptizing. Each country runs under its own name, Baptize Denmark or Baptize Canada, hosted by local congregations rather than a touring ministry, all pointed at one date. No church is asked to hand over its people or rebrand for a weekend.
Why a whole church goes in the water together
Water baptism is one of the most significant steps a person takes after saying yes to Jesus. It’s public, it’s personal, and it tends to be the moment somebody’s family finally understands that something real happened.
Doing it together changes the temperature of a room. Fifty people in line instead of two. Cousins and coworkers on the sand with their phones up. The person going under is baptized by their own church, in front of people who already know their name, and they’ll be back in that same room next Sunday.
If your church has been waiting to do baptisms until you have a proper baptistry, the ocean has been out there the whole time. So has the lake down the road, and so has the inflatable pool somebody’s kids outgrew.
About that motto
“Be Generous” is our motto, and it’s a claim about timing as much as anything else.
People give when they’re moved to give. Standing on a beach watching a stranger come up out of the water, deciding right then that they want to be part of paying for it. If completing that gift takes three days and a password reset, a lot of it never happens. Closing that gap is the reason Pushpay exists.
Mission work has always needed funding behind it. Giving is worship, and it’s also how the work gets paid for, and we’ve never seen a reason to be shy about holding both of those at once.
Where we come in
What a movement like this needs from a giving platform is specific and unglamorous. Gifts arrive from individuals and from participating churches, clustered heavily around a couple of weeks in the spring. Each one needs a receipt and a donor record carrying enough history that their team can thank someone in June and invite them back in February. The recurring gifts are what fund the eleven months between events, when the work looks like coaching a pastor through a first ocean baptism or answering the church in Ohio that wants to know about liability waivers.
We’re collaborating with the Baptize the World team to help more churches hear about what they’re doing. Their part is the water. Ours is making sure the giving side keeps up with them.
May 16, 2027
Pentecost Sunday next year falls on May 16, and that’s the next global day of baptism. Any church can join. There’s also a gathering planned in Brazil in February.
If you’re thinking about hosting, start now rather than in March. Water access and municipal permits take the longest and they’re the piece that can’t be rushed, and if you’re baptizing indoors you still need a plan for a whole lot of wet people and one parking lot. Decide who’s making Monday’s phone calls before you decide what the band plays.
If you want in
Everything is at baptize.org: the sign-up for 2027, the asset library, and a way to give. If your spring calendar is already full, funding somebody else’s weekend counts.
And if you’re curious what’s running behind their giving page, take the self-guided tour of the Pushpay Giving platform.
