John Markum

Author: johnmarkum

I was Not Productive Today

Posted on by johnmarkum

And that’s ok…

Over the last couple of years I have pushed myself very hard. I’ve written a number of Bible studies, started on a book, finished a Master’s degree, and almost a second one (MDiv). I led our church to baptize 18 people on one Sunday (20 for 2025 so far), created a discipleship system, and went on three different missions trips – all in addition to raising a family, preaching every week, and so on…

For the last year or more, every “day off” I’ve had, has generally consisted of working on a class, reading tomes of textbooks, preparing for sermons, or working on creating another Bible study. And if by chance I wasn’t cranking out more content, I was feeling guilty about the mountain of work still waiting for me.

Additionally, for the past year, I’ve been wrestling with some persistent health issues that have continued to add pain and stress to my routine. This has left me trying to continue operating at full speed on half a tank of energy most days. I haven’t discussed these issues much, as I didn’t want people to worry about me. For me, these health issues were an inconvenience – something slowing me down, that I needed to overcome. But what if it were something more…

Sunday night last week, I started to feel sick. I woke up Monday with a headache and feeling achy all over.

Great! Just what I needed. But for the first time in a while, I wasn’t leading our growing church through any major shifts anytime soon, I was finished with class for the next month or so, and the sermon prep and Bible study writing – it could all wait. I checked my emails, sent a few texts, and then realized, I can’t do this today. So I did something I rarely do: I took a 2-hour nap! Ask my wife, and she will tell you I almost never nap! I’ve been taking life a lot slower this week, sleeping much better, and trying to focus on only doing, what only I can do.

In Exodus 20, God commands the OT nation of Israel to observe the Sabbath day of rest and to “keep it holy… For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; for that reason the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11). Later on the NT, God affirms that we must “strive” to enter into God’s Sabbath rest for our souls, that is made complete in Christ (Hebrews 4).

The point of “Sabbath-ing,” as some call it, is not ultimately a matter of religious strictness. Rather, it is recognition that God formed all creation in six days and then stopped. And we’re not God, so we have no business trying to outwork Him. We are not busier or more important than the Creator of the universe! My friend and fellow pastor, Justin Buzzard, said it quite eloquently, “No matter what we do, one day we’re all going to die with a huge pile of unfinished work.” So why stress ourselves out trying to finish our never-ending to-do list? I’m not saying give up, of course! And I’m definitely not saying we should be lazy. But I am saying – from a lot of personal experience – that we will either rest out of obedience or out of over-exhaustion.

So sleep in on your day off.
Go on a date.
Take the PTO.
Read something that is not work/school related.
Eat great food.
Jump in the water.
Take a hike.
Touch grass!

Whatever you do, do not just sit and “doom scroll” the day away – that is not the same as resting! Be blessed this week. And realize that your rest after a hard day’s work is also an act of worship.

Blessings,
Pastor John

Why Your Church Should Host Spontaneous Baptisms

Posted on by johnmarkum

Pentecost Sunday is the church began with the gift of the Holy Spirit, in which 3,000 people were saved, baptized, and added to the church in a single day (Acts 2). This Christian holiday is exactly 7 weeks after Easter, and a day Christians of any denomination can and should consider commemorating. The best way to do so, in my opinion, is by baptizing new followers of Christ, just as the early church did on Pentecost.

This Pentecost (June 8, 2025), our church baptized 18 people on Pentecost Sunday. Of those 18, 12 were people who had recently expressed they had received Christ and were ready to declare their faith publicly through believer’s baptism. Another two people were individuals who had recently trusted in Christ or were coming back to their faith after wandering, but we did not know for sure if they were ready to get baptized. And then there were four people who decided that day to receive Christ and/or take their next step through baptism. I have generally called this “spontaneous baptisms” as they were not planned in advance, but I’ve also heard this called “open baptisms” as the invitation to get baptized that day is “open” to whoever is ready to declare Christ as Savior and be baptized.

We did this baptism service in cooperation with thousands of other churches across the country in a coordinated effort we called Baptize America. As a result, we collectively led 27,858 people into believer’s baptism on Pentecost weekend – a historic event, and the largest coordinated baptism service in the history of the church, best as we can tell. Next Pentecost Sunday (May 24, 2026), we are collectively working the same event, but globally, calling it Baptize All Nations. I have been very committed to urging my fellow American pastors – and international pastors and missionaries – to participate with us in this coordinated effort. One of the hang-ups many pastors have is that they are uncomfortable with the idea of spontaneous baptisms, so if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to make a case for doing spontaneous baptisms, at least on occasion.

Why your church should consider doing spontaneous baptisms:

  • It’s the only kind of baptism we see in the New Testament. Read Acts carefully, focusing on the mode of baptism, and you’ll quickly discover that day-of baptisms were the only baptisms found in the early church. Not only on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41), but also with the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:36-38), Cornelius (Acts 10:44-48), and the Philippian jailor (Acts 16:30-34).
  • We only ever know so much about a person’s heart anyway. One of the biggest reasons for delaying baptism is that we want to know that the convert to Christianity is truly sincere. We think that time and perhaps proper vetting will tell us the truth of their devotion to Christ. What I find is that often this only serves to frustrate the new believer rather than leading them toward obedience. And none of us truly knows the heart of a person anyway. Yes, we should discern as best as we can, seek guidance from the Lord, and be reasonably diligent in our assessment of their faith in Christ. But in the end, their salvation is between them and God. That is why we all must “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12).
  • It gets back to the Biblical expression of our salvation. One of my frustrations with the “wait and see first” model of baptism, is that it creates too much division between saving faith and our first works in Christ. Often driven by an effort to view baptism as a “work” protestants, evangelicals, and fundamentalists have all been swift to create space between salvation and baptism. “After all,” we’ve argued, “baptism doesn’t save us anyway.” And so in place of baptism, we’ve had people pray a prayer out loud, check a box on a card, raise their hand, stand to their feet, come forward to the altar, etc. – none of which we will find in the Bible. What we will find as the mechanism for people choosing Jesus as their Lord and Savior is being baptized. I could write a whole other blog post about this, but in short, no baptism does not save you, Jesus does, and “by grace you have been saved through faith…” (Ephesians 2:8-10). And yet, if you have truly trusted in Jesus and placed your faith in Him as your Lord and Savior, I am convinced by God’s Word that you will get baptized, provided that you are not somehow physically incapable of doing so such as the thief on the cross.

If I have sufficiently persuaded you to be open to the idea of spontaneous baptisms, let me share a little about how we did this successfully, and you can also…

How do you have a successful spontaneous baptism Sunday…

  • Plan ahead. Just because there will be people who did not plan on getting baptized until that day, doesn’t mean you didn’t plan for them! We have a darker colored baptism shirt that our people get to keep when they get baptized, that has our church logo and “I have decided” printed on it, in honor of the old hymn, “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.” We have every size possible of the shirts, and we also have shorts and undergarments that we buy cheap and in bulk – all of which they keep! We also have hairdryers and brushes for the women, plenty of towels, and volunteer photographers to capture the event for their loved ones who might now be there.
  • Preach the Gospel! We never just “let” people get baptized! We make sure to give a clear, straightforward Gospel presentation with an opportunity to respond. Usually (such as for Pentecost Sunday) we commit the entire service to celebrating past baptisms, and teaching on what baptism is according to the Bible. This makes sure we do our part to make people understand as clearly, yet as simply as possible, the deep importance of knowing Jesus and following in baptism. This past year I preached from Romans 6.
  • Have counselors available. Everyone gets counseled beforehand! This year, we had a list of everyone we knew was planning to get baptized, and we had previously counseled them about the Gospel, knowing Jesus, and the importance of being baptized. So when they stood to get baptized, they just had to change and be ready. But for those who were not previously planned, but were more “spontaneous” in the moment to get baptized, we have dedicated leaders, pastors, elders, etc. who were prepared to go over the Gospel and baptism with them. These conversations usually only take 5 minutes, since we just gave an entire sermon on the subject.
  • Be appropriately restrictive. We will not just baptize anyone who comes forward. One of the things we say before we give people the opportunity to respond is that – while we do baptize children 6 years old or older – we never baptize kids under 16 spontaneously. Out of the 18 kids we baptized, four of them were children between ages 6-10. But all of these kids had multiple conversations, often over the course of a few months or even over a year. We want to be sure that a child understands the Gospel at an appropriate level and remembers the decision to follow Jesus into baptism. We also occasionally have to tell an adult, “No, not today.” They could be struggling with the Gospel, wanting to get baptized for a bad reason, etc. So we politely defer their baptism to a later day after we can talk more thoroughly through whatever issue they may be hung up on.

It is a thrilling experience to give people the opportunity to say “yes” to Jesus, and watch them immediately go forward in baptism in the same day and moment. If you are a pastor/church leader who would like help arranging a spontaneous baptism service at your church, or you want to know more about participating in a global move of baptisms next Pentecost Sunday, you can email me at pastor@johnmarkum.org.

Also, if you would like to know more about getting baptized at Life Valley Church, click here! We plan on having our next baptism service Sunday, September 14.

Blessings,
Pastor John

The Vision is MUCH Bigger Than Me

Posted on by johnmarkum

You may have recently seen that I am trying to raise financial support, and I would like to explain why…

Last year, I was gently (yet firmly) challenged by a mentor. This dear friend knows my heart, and has seen me pour my guts into the ministry for many years. He’s also been one of my biggest cheerleaders along the way. His challenge to me was that the vision for what God wants to do through my life was much bigger than me. And because of that, I needed to find new and creative ways to propel the vision God had given me, namely by bringing more and more people into the vision. I am writing this to begin sharing that vision with you here…

When I planted a church in Silicon Valley 12 years ago, I knew the risk of failure was high, but I also knew that the San Francisco Bay needed more Gospel-centered churches than just the one I was called to start and pastor myself. Because of this, I didn’t just want to plant a church in the Bay Area – I wanted to be a catalyst for a church planting movement. And yet, the vision is even more than that… As Silicon Valley is the most diverse community in the U.S., with people migrating here from all over the world for work, the opportunities to spread the Gospel globally from this part of the world are enormous. I now have many friends and fellow church leaders all over Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, Cambodia, Europe, South America, and so on.

So here are the specific vision goals I have, which I believe God has given me to pursue…

  • To bring about a church multiplication movement here in the Bay Area. Over the next year, I will share more, but I am already in the beginning phases of partnering with others to plant healthy, growing, reproducing churches in San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and every city in between. What happens in Silicon Valley changes the world.
  • Create and deploy a practical Discipleship System any church can use to grow new believers into mature followers of Jesus Christ. My Discipleship primer and Bible Studies are the beginning, and are part of an entire system I am working to create. In total, there will be the Intentional Discipleship primer for seekers and new believers, 12 studies walking through the entire narrative of the Bible, and supporting studies on key passages, theology, and so on.
  • Create encouraging and useful “Nuts-and-Bolts” tools any church leader can benefit from, tailor to their context, and deploy. This blog is one such resource, with others coming this year and early 2026. I’ll be further developing my YouTube channel, with a possibility to revive my podcast.
  • Unite, equip, and serve the worldwide move of the Gospel. This is particularly important for me among underreached people groups. My primary task with this currently, is mobilizing our international ministry connections to participating in Baptize All Nations – the global vision that began as Baptize SoCal, then Baptize California, and recently Baptize America.
  • Develop and deploy many new leaders into the work of ministry. I am partnering with other global organizations to create and unleash Bible college courses at near-free cost to the students to equip the next generation of church leaders internationally. These are the future leaders of the Church across the globe! Additionally, I am continuing to develop in house leadership tools that can be used in other contexts. The vision God has given me is only as possible as we release new leaders with our heart into Kingdom work.

This past Pentecost Sunday (June 8), our small (but growing) church of 200 baptized 18 people on a single day. That is almost 10% of our average weekend attendance! I am captivated by the idea: “What if God did the same thing in every other Gospel-preaching church around the globe?”

If you’re a pastor reading this, what would it look like to see 10% of your average weekly attendance baptized in one weekend? And what if every Bible church in your city or state did the same? How would that change your community?… Now multiply that effect across the country… and across the world.

God has given me two extraordinary opportunities to be a catalyst for such a movement, and I am seeking your support:

  • This August, I have been invited to be one of 490 international delegates at the Jerusalem II Council, being held in Athens, Greece. This council will be working to discern the direction of God in the church as we close in on the 2,000 birthday of the church. Here, I hope to be a catalytic voice in uniting the global church around the Gospel and calling people into believer’s baptism in the upcoming Pentecost Sunday 2026.
  • And then in January 2026, I am returning to the Philippines in partnership with Global Surge ministries to cast the vision and equip pastors and leaders from over 30 church located across 7 different countries, coming together in Manila.

Because of all of these incredible opportunities that God has given me, there will literally thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of people collectively receiving Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and becoming baptized into His family on May 24, 2026 next year. This is way bigger than me. And I do not fully understand why God would give me the privilege of leading such a global effort. But I know I cannot do this on my own. I need your help.

In total, I am attempting to raise $9,200 through GoFundMe, to cover the two major trips mentioned above. This will cover me, and one accompanying person on both trips, to maximize these efforts, and see them materialize. I need to raise this money between now and the end of 2025. Perhaps you would make a one-time gift of $100. Others may do $20/month. And perhaps some of you would see the vision with me, and give something truly sacrificial to this effort.

For all of you who have supported my ministry in the past, I hope you can see the fruit we have created (and continue to create) together for God’s glory. 18 baptisms in one day is still just the beginning. There are millions more I want to reach here in the Bay Area. And the world is waiting as well. I am asking you to send me, and I will go see to this work.

To all of you, thank you for your support and vote of confidence. Let’s see a global revival together.

Blessings,
Pastor John

You may have recently seen that I am trying to raise financial support, and I would like to explain why... Last year, I was gently (yet firmly) challenged by a mentor. This dear friend knows my heart, and has seen me pour my guts into the ministry for many years. He's also been one of my biggest

The Vision is MUCH Bigger Than Me