Do you ever feel a nagging sense of guilt or frustration when it comes to connecting people who have just made a life-changing decision to follow Jesus and be baptized?
When God moves and we choose not to in these important moments, it can be disheartening for us and for those making these transforming choices.
Even if we have a great plan to connect them, it can be discouraging and down right exasperating if it isn’t effective — or when your church as a whole doesn’t follow through on that plan in a timely way.
At one point at Eastside, we were baptizing 1 out of 3 guests — so we had lots of opportunity to hone in our post-baptism connection strategies!
I want to share with you the simplest 3 ways to better connect these people who are SO ready
➊ Text them instead of email or calling
We used to call people who were recently baptized — it felt more personal, and the hope was that it would lead to a rich conversation!
But… because most of us do not answer the phone if their person calling isn’t in our address book, these calls from strangers are sent to voicemail. Rarely do they get returned, even if the message that is left is as warm and inviting as possible.
The easiest solution for most churches is sending an email afterward — it’s usually built into the Church Management Software, after all.
But… emails run into deliverability issues, poor open rates, and usually waaaaaaaaay too much information to actually read.
Text message open rates are 98%, and texts are read on average within 15 minutes of sending.
When I called them I probably got to actually talk to no more than 20%.
The first month I texted them, I had a conversations with 83%.
Our young adult ministry direct messages them through Instagram and sees similar results.
You can even spread out the names across a volunteer team or staff members if the numbers are especially high. But what a beautiful problem to have! These conversations are worth the work, because recently baptized people are some of our warmest leads! They WANT more, so let’s give it to them!
If you don’t spread it out across multiple people, though, grab a texting platform like Text-in-Church or ChurchStream so you can send the texts en masse, but reply one-by-one! That’s the ultimate in scalable connection.
Just make sure it’s a 10-digit number and it’s from YOU — not “the church.” People want to connect with people, not institutions.
But the mode of contact has not been the only reason for our increased engagement with those who are newly baptized. What you say to them matters.
➋ Use questions to create a real conversation
Texting congratulations and a link to your connection event, membership class or small group page on your website is not a real conversation.
In fact, it’s not a conversation at all.
Conversations involve questions and answers. Real dialogue. The longer your text thread, the more engaged the person is with you.
The first text I send is the only one that does not end with a question. It usually says something like this:
Hi Carla. I’m Greg and I’m one of the pastors at Eastside. I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate you on your baptism last weekend. I have been praying for you today. Hope you sensed a strength outside your own as you went through your week.
Here are the questions I have sent those who contact people who are baptized, with instructions to call them by the Friday after they are baptized:
What made you decide to be baptized?
How long have you been coming to our church?
How did you find our church?
How can I pray for you this week? (set a reminder and re-engage the following week)
Questions like this will allow you to hear some great stories of what God is doing in people’s lives and how God is using your church to write new stories for people.
They also make people feel that someone at your church is genuinely interested in them — which will be the primary reason they trust you when you…
➌ Invite them to their next step
One of the most common reasons we fail to effectively connect people who have made significant decisions to follow Jesus (like getting baptized) is that we do not have a clearly understood next step for them.
If this is your church, fix this first.
People don’t want to have multiple choices to evaluate in this day of information inundation: they want to say “yes or no” to one option at a time.
You need to decide what that option is at your church for each point in your engagement pathway.
If you offer guests a multiple choice answer to what their next step “might” be, they will usually pick “D: none of the above”.
If you have a next step that your entire church knows about and communicates to people when they are baptized, you will see people move forward and connect like never before.
That’s why all those who follow up with people who are baptized at my church end their text conversations by recommending our “One Program” - the 2nd element of our Assimilation System.
So their big goal is to conversationally drive people toward the First Step page on our website.
This is how new people find out more about First Step and how to jump in. This is the ultimate goal of our baptism follow up: to get people to First Step.
It only works well for us because everyone at our church has confidence that First Step will provide them with a powerful path toward becoming a connected, serving member.
Here is a story of Mario who was baptized recently. He and his mother then attended Next Steps (our older 4-week One Program) and found a grief support group at our church.
If connecting new people who are baptized is something you want to do more effectively this year, share this post with your team and answer the questions below with them!
Ready to See How Your Whole System Works?
If you’re ready to go beyond the baptism moment and build a system that connects people all the way from first visit to full engagement, start with the Assimilation Audit.
In just 10 minutes (and a debrief call with one of us), you’ll see where guests are slipping through the cracks and where your team can create more connection.
➊ How do you currently connect people who are baptized at your church? What percentage of those baptized are getting into a small group of ministry team within 4 months?
➋ How do you do to connect with them? Do you think texting or calling would be best? What other methods would you include?
➌ What kind of training or copy might those who follow up on baptisms need to create engaging conversations rather than just sending them info?
