Follow Up

Many people will show up for your Baptism Celebration service and some will show a great interest in your church. Indeed, many might follow the example of those being baptized and commit their lives to Jesus! How do you encourage them to make their decisions public? How do you get them to continue to attend church? What can you do to encourage them to enroll in Bible Study? How do you give them further training to mature them in Christ? This is what follow-up is all about!

A Baptism Celebration service provides excellent opportunities for follow-up. Most of the visitors will be friends or acquaintances of the baptismal candidate. Thus, he or she will already have at least one friend in your church. Some will be visitors from out-of-town. Through the Evangelism Response Center’s covenant church network you now have an easy way to route their names and contact information to a good church in their area.

Many pastors and churches treat follow-up as an afterthought; a tag-on concern after someone has made a decision to receive Jesus Christ. Actually, an effective follow-up strategy begins even before your Baptism Celebration event begins. Accurate registration of each and every guest is a vital element of follow-up. Effectively recording each spiritual decision or inquiry is part of the follow-up strategy. This will enable you to be ready for future contacts by mail, telephone, email, or personal visits.

A well-defined, highly visible, and easily accessible registration area should be established and staffed. During the service or at the door each person should have the opportunity to fill out a record of their attendance. An easy way to use a response card to do this is contained in the “Draw the Net” section of this site.

Church members should be trained and organized for friendliness. At every juncture (parking lot, entrance to building, entrance to worship center, etc.) people should be given a warm welcome. Sometimes a fellowship or party after the Baptism Celebration can be a time for further assimilation, and growth in fellowship to occur between visitors and members.

“Encouragers” should be secured. These are members of your church who receive training in how to counsel respondents who are interested in beginning a relationship with Christ, finding our more about baptism or church membership, or who have spiritual doubts, insecurities, questions, or prayer requests. Train each of your encouragers to use the “Personal Commitment Guide” available from the North American Mission Board. This guide provides information about salvation, assurance, church membership, rededication, and church involvement. It has a commitment card that can be used to register and decisions made. Also, the Personal Commitment Guide has a section entitled Toward Christian Maturity that can be used as an introduction to your church’s ongoing follow-up and discipleship program. 

Emphasize to encouragers the importance of getting accurate information about each respondent. Teach them how to begin to assimilate respondents into the total life if your church’s fellowship. The best way to do this is to make sure your encouragers are personally involved in Sunday School (or small groups) and other discipleship, training, and fellowship opportunities your church offers.

Organize a leader to be responsible to gather all commitment card or enrollment forms. If the writing on some of the cards is illegible, locate the encourager and make corrections immediately.

Arrange for a personal follow up visit with each person who has made any type of commitment, and especially for those who indicate an interest in receiving Christ. Ideally the person who counseled the interested seeker should be the one to make this contact. If this is not possible distribute the name of the person to an experienced follow-up team member. This initial contact should be made within three days! Deliver materials to help the new believer or interested seeker grow in Christ and learn. A list of follow up materials is contained on the North American Mission Board’s website.

Invite all attendees to come back to church! Each visitor should be assigned to someone in your church who will be willing to invite (or better yet bring) them to church, introduce them to others, sit with them in Bible study or church, and do anything else necessary to get them involved. You have introduced them to Christ; now introduce them to your church, His bride!

The work of follow-up should be bathed in prayer. Make prayer a priority. This will determine the long-term success or failure of your follow-up effort. All of your outreach and hard work of planning your Baptism Celebration service will be sustained if you take the job of follow-up seriously.