faith – John Markum

Why Your Church Should Host Spontaneous Baptisms

Posted on June 27, 2025June 27, 2025 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

18 Baptized in a Single Day!

Posted on June 16, 2025June 16, 2025 by johnmarkum

As God has been blessing our ministry at Life Valley Community Church, we have been passionately and urgently calling people to give their lives to Jesus Christ and be baptized into God’s family. This past Pentecost Sunday (June 8), we were able to lead 18 people to take this public step of faith in Christ!

But what was particularly incredible was that we only had 12 people that we knew were prepared to get baptized! In partnership with Baptize America, we coordinated this baptism Sunday with thousands of other churches across the country, to proclaim the Gospel message and call people into believer’s baptism. Two people found us because of Baptize America, and another handful of people responded to the message, received Christ as their Lord and Savior, and were baptized that day, just like the first Pentecost Sunday.

I know that not every pastor or church is warm to the idea of “spontaneous baptisms” who come forward for baptism that day, but we have found that there is an appropriate way to do it. Additionally, every example we see in Scripture of baptism, it was what you might consider “spontaneous”. There are two major considerations for having successful baptisms for people who come forward Day-of a Baptism Sunday.

Spiritually prepared. We want to make sure that everyone getting baptized at LVCC is doing so because they have trusted in Jesus Christ death and resurrection for their salvation. Because of this, we generally do an entire message on baptism for that day, so that we have given plenty of attention to the doctrinal concerns of people’s motives. We also have counsellors to talk to before getting baptized, so that we know we are all on the same page about why we are baptizing someone. The counselling process usually only takes 5-10 minutes after we had an entire message, and occasionally we do need to tell someone “Not today, but we would love to talk more with you so you can be ready for a future baptism day.”
Physical considerations. If you’re going to offer baptism to people who did not come prepared to get baptized, at least you and your leaders should be prepared! For this, we have plenty of extra towels, a t-shirt they get to keep, as well as undergarments and gym shorts of every size. We also walk through how they will get baptized when they meet with our counsellors.

We had set a goal of 20 baptisms at Life Valley in 2025, and with an earlier baptism, we are already at our goal! What is particularly exciting to me, is that we are also only halfway through the year! And with others in our church who have recently received Christ or indicated a desire to be baptized, we have 10 more people currently needing to be baptized.

To all of you who partner with our ministry, thank you for serving Jesus with us. 2025 is shaping up to be our most amazing year yet!

Blessings,
Pastor John

Was Mary Ascended into Heaven?

Posted on March 1, 2025March 1, 2025 by johnmarkum

Here on my blog, I have been addressing the doctrines of Catholicism that revolve around their belief that Mary was something more than Protestant Christians claim her to be. You can read more on each below. The four core dogmas of RCC Mariology include:

Perpetual Virginity. This is the notion that Mary remained a virgin after giving birth to Jesus, and was never sexually intimate with her husband Joseph, and gave him no children aside from Jesus (who was not biologically Joseph’s son).
Immaculate Conception. The idea behind this doctrine is that in order for Mary to have been the vessel for bringing God’s Son into the world, she too must have been sinless.
Mary as “The Mother of God”. This doctrine is based on the Greek title theotokos meaning “God Bearer” or “Mother of God”. Protestants generally reject this title, and I discuss why at the link.
The Assumption of Mary. This doctrine insists that Mary ascended into Heaven – or, God “assumed” her into Heaven – like Christ, Elijah, and Enoch are described as having experienced.

Let’s address the Assumption of Mary…

For starters, it is important to understand that God has in fact raised people to Heaven either before death as in the case of Enoch (Genesis 5:21-24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:9-11), or afterward in the case of Christ (Acts 1:9-11). So there is ample precedence to suggest God could have done so with Mary. But did He, and is there any evidence of this?

According to church history, Mary did in fact die, though the details are a very thin, which has convinced some (but not all) Catholics to believe she did not die at all. The historical account of her death from natural causes is referred to as the “Dormition of Mary”. Best as we can tell she seems to have died in Jerusalem, and in the company of a few of the apostles including John. This places the time of her death and/or ascension somewhere before 70 AD when Jerusalem fell to the Roman siege of the city. Yet there is no recorded mentioning of Mary’s death and assumption… with one, possible, exception…

Revelation 12:1-6,

“A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child; and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth… And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.”

Catholics will assert that these verses are a “clear reference” to Mary in the Heavens, clothed with the sun, and in a position of honor and glory, “proving” the Bible supports the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. Here are the flaws in their “proof”…

Mary’s supposed ascension is never mentioned or even implied. It begins with a “great sign in heaven”, but does not indicate how the “woman” got there. We believe Heaven is full of people who were not “assumed” into the spiritual dimension. Furthermore, Mary is not even named! The imagery could just as easily be referring to the nation of Israel as a whole, and God’s protection of “her” in the wilderness for 3.5 years in the future would strongly suggest that is a better interpretation.
Revelation is written in the Biblical apocalyptic genre. As such, it is flush with figurative imagery which is almost impossible to interpret literally in every instance that does not give us clear indicators. If this passage even is referring to Mary, she does not “literally” wear the sun as a garment, nor does she have a literal crown of 12 literal stars… again, this strongly suggests a reference to Israel, not Mary.
The rules of interpretation cannot bend that far. The only way to interpret this passage as a “clear” reference to Mary’s assumption is if you decided it meant that and tried to make it fit, also known as eisegesis. By contrast, honest interpretation of Scripture requires exegesis, or extracting meaning from a given text within the intended contextual settings.

Again, I am not against the idea that God did something miraculous for the woman who brought God the Son’s incarnation into the world. As mentioned earlier, He’s done so for a small handful of others. But there is zero proof of this. In fact, we have zero historical records of any dormition traditions regarding Mary until 450-600 AD – a whopping four centuries after her lifetime! That’s a lot of time for Christian superstitions to emerge, especially in an era that was very susceptible to such infiltrations of false beliefs.

I will write one final piece concerning Mary, how Protestants generally view her, and what I think is appropriate to the mother of our Jesus.

Blessings,
Pastor John