Upstate Church in South Carolina, which has six sites and 7,000 members in the Simpsonville area, is celebrating a momentous day after baptizing 141 people in a single day on December 3rd. The baptism service was planned in advance, with 86 originally signing up to be baptized. By the end of the service, 55 other people had made the decision to be baptized as well. The church had been preaching a series on the ordinances of the church, of which baptism is a part. 

Senior Pastor Wayne Bray said he was overwhelmed by the outcome. The church had made two invitations for baptism during the service, with the first 86 being those who had never made a profession of faith and the following 55 being those who had been believers but had never been baptized. “We had high expectations but had no idea what God had planned. I have never personally been a part of anything like this,” said Bray. The church has developed a very intentional process on discipling and baptizing new believers through its newly developed Spiritual Formation Team. When Bray and his wife began serving in 2015, the church averaged 1,690 people in worship service. Now, in 2023, it averages 3,700. “From the beginning, it was my prayer and intention to lead the church through an intentional process of revisioning and remediation,” said Bray of his church’s strategy. “We clearly defined our mission to ‘connect people in the upstate with Jesus to change their world, while identifying our primary target as young families with kids at home.’ To be clear, we want to reach everyone, but we also realize that a church that isn’t reaching young families is a dying church. Therefore, we have committed to be a multigenerational church, leaning forward into the next generation.” Up until the December 3rd service, the number of people the church had baptized in one day was 35. 

Bray told The Christian Post he felt like the church of Acts 2. “I can’t adequately express how amazing it was to be a part of the day. More than any other moment in my ministry, I felt like we were living the book of Acts. We had preached from Acts 2, and it seemed as if we were in the pages ourselves.” Acts 2 is filled with the exploits of the early church, including mass professions of faith and baptisms. Baptism is also just the starting point for those who made the decision on Sunday. Those who participated in the baptismal service were assessed prior to the service to ensure their readiness. After the service, they will be contacted and offered discipleship. “We don’t just want to be a church that makes disciples. We want to be a church full of disciple-makers. That is our heart, and we believe that is what God is doing at Upstate Church,” said Bray. Elsewhere, he said, the church is raised on a “culture of divine expectation.” “We expect God to move every week, and we encourage every member to be bold and invite people to visit our church,” he said. “Our hope is to create a culture of personal evangelism and to build a missional system for mobilizing the people of the church to be mid-week ambassadors for Christ.”