BEYOND THE SPLASH

What if every baptism were treated not as the end of an event, but as the beginning of a purposeful shared journey toward Christlikeness?

We Planned the Wedding, But Who Is Helping with the Marriage?

I’ve heard that the median cost for a wedding these days in the United States is somewhere between $20,000 and $25,000. The average is even higher, landing between $33,000 and $36,000.1 Just imagine what you could do with an extra $30,000. If your rent is $1,700 a month, you could live for a year and a half without worrying about the landlord. If you’re making a $500 car payment, you could drive for almost four years before the bank calls. That’s a lot of cake and chicken dinners.

Now, have you ever wondered just how many hours a couple spends getting ready for the big day? If they’re doing most of it themselves, the experts say it’s somewhere between 250 and 400 hours.2 Let’s split the difference and call it 325 hours. That’s two months of full-time work, eight hours a day, every day. For that kind of time, you could walk from New York City to Miami (if your feet held out), or get halfway to learning a new language—maybe enough Spanish to order at the local taco truck with confidence.  

Having served as a pastor for more than a couple of decades, I’ve stood at the front for more weddings than I can count. I’ve watched the work, the planning, the expense, and the emotional rollercoaster that comes with “the big day.”

Wouldn’t it be something if couples put even half as much effort into preparing for the marriage as they do for the wedding? The wedding is over in a day or maybe a weekend if you stretch it. The marriage, Lord willing, is meant to last a lifetime.

And sure enough, at every reception, there’s always someone at a table in the back corner who leans over and says, “Well, I hope it works out.” Don’t we all.

If I’m honest, we Baptists sometimes treat baptism the same way. Baptism is a moment, but “walking in newness of life” is a lifelong journey. Could it be that we treat baptism like couples treat the wedding—crossing our fingers, saying a prayer, and hoping God helps them figure out the rest?

Now, baptism isn’t a wedding, but the comparison does shine a light on a familiar church problem. We get the testimony ready, fill the baptistery, invite the family, snap the picture, celebrate the obedience, and report the number. Then Monday rolls around. Old habits are still strong. The Bible can feel overwhelming. Prayer might feel awkward. Family members may not get it. The new believer is sincere, but may have no clue how to follow Jesus through a regular week.

The Sunday splash is real. But who’s walking with them on Monday? That’s the real question, and it comes from a place of honesty and even some nervous joy. Stick with me.

The Good News and the Obligation It Creates

Southern Baptists do have reason to rejoice. The 2025 Annual Church Profile reported 263,075 baptisms, the fifth consecutive annual increase and the highest total since 2017.3 Adults aged 30 and older accounted for 33 percent, young adults for another 20 percent, and youth for 25 percent.4 These are not merely numbers. They are people publicly identifying with the crucified and risen Christ.

But doesn’t every baptism create a discipleship obligation? In the Great Commission, baptism and teaching sit inside the one command to make disciples (Matt. 28:19–20). The Baptist Faith and Message describes baptism as identification with Christ and with “the resurrection to walk in newness of life.”5 The water marks a beginning. The walk requires a church.

Dallas Willard often described baptism in this passage as the believer's union with the reality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not about making sure the person is wet from head to toe. It's the represented reality of the believers’ immersion into the triune God. Willard paraphrases Matthew 28:18-20 this way:

"I have been given say over all things in heaven and in the earth. As you go, therefore, make disciples of all kinds of people, submerge them in Trinitarian Presence, and show them how to do everything I have commanded. And now look: I am with you every minute until the job's done.”6

When we celebrate new life but leave the new believer to invent the walk, we have completed the first half of a sentence and left the second unsaid. We get the picture, but we miss the reality.

How Tomorrow’s Ghost Roster Is Made

The Ghost Roster is not made up only of inherited names and people who moved years ago. Sometimes tomorrow’s Ghost Roster is created one unaccompanied baptism at a time. A person is baptized, applauded, added to the roll, and quietly left to find a class, build relationships, understand the church, establish spiritual habits, and survive doubt without anyone noticing whether the person is connected.

I’m not saying this is everyone’s experience. However, it has been mine. 

But what do the statistics say? I’m glad you asked. Lifeway’s State of Discipleship study found that only 52 percent of Protestant pastors say their church has an intentional plan for discipling individuals. 71 percent believe discipleship can be measured, but only 30 percent say their church has specific methods for measuring it.7 Only 29 percent regularly evaluate discipleship progress, while 38 percent say no one is responsible for the church’s discipleship programs. In churches averaging fewer than fifty, that “no one” reaches 50 percent.8

Everybody is for discipleship. Most of us assume it’s happening. But too often, if you ask who’s responsible for the next step, you get a lot of blank stares.

Why Is a Scorecard So Hard?

The Lifeway study establishes the gap, but it did not directly ask pastors why they lack a specific measurement method. The surrounding findings nevertheless point toward several likely reasons.

• We do not have the same definition of discipleship. Pastors name Bible study, prayer, mentoring, service, doctrine, groups, obedience, mission, and many other elements. Agreement that discipleship matters is stronger than agreement about what a disciple looks like.

• Activity often is a substitute for a pathway. A church can have sermons, classes, groups, studies, and events galore, but if there’s no clear destination, no sequence, no one in charge, and no handoff, it’s just a busy calendar. You can have a full schedule and still be going nowhere.

• Relationships rarely happen organically. Pastors overwhelmingly say discipleship happens relationally, but mentoring takes trusted people, training, time, boundaries, and follow-through. You know the old saying, “Fail to plan and you plan to fail.” Saying discipleship just happens organically is only half true—and the lazy half at that. We have to be intentional about making those connections.

• Limited capacity is a real issue. Pastors report too few disciple-makers, inadequate training, competing priorities, low interest, and insufficient time.9

• The most important parts of spiritual growth aren’t easy to count. You can track attendance and course completion, but humility, repentance, fortitude, courage, love, and depending on the Spirit don’t fit neatly in a spreadsheet. They may not be easy to count, but you can still see them when they show up.

• Honest, humble evaluation can tell us the truth. A church might find out that no one owns the process, the programs don’t connect, or that baptized believers are slipping through the cracks. Measuring isn’t just a technical thing—it takes pastoral courage. Truth is not our enemy. Facts are our friends. Pastors need humility and honesty to face what’s really happening.

Benchmarks Are Mile Markers, Not Finish Lines

Sometimes churches worry that if we get too clear, we’ll end up with a performance-based culture. But clarity isn’t legalism. A mile marker doesn’t make the journey or prove the traveler is healthy—it just tells us where we are and keeps us honest about the road we’ve traveled.

A church ought to know if someone has confessed Christ, received baptism counseling, attended orientation, been baptized, finished a basic Christian growth class, connected with other believers, started serving, learned to share their testimony, and had a six- and twelve-month check-in. These aren’t grades on holiness. They’re just signs that we’ve built a road to walk on, instead of pointing people off toward the horizon and hoping they find their way.

A Pathway a Normal Church Can Actually Use

#	Benchmark	Usual window	Church’s next faithful action
1	Confess Christ as Savior and Lord	Before baptism	Hear the story; clarify repentance, faith, and the gospel.
2	Complete baptism counseling	Before baptism	Explain baptism, assurance, church membership, and the first ninety days.
3	Discover Our Church	Before or within 30 days	Introduce covenant belonging, beliefs, mission, leaders, and next steps.
4	Baptism	Public beginning	Celebrate public obedience and identify the named post-baptism shepherd.
5	Basics of Christian Growth	Weeks 1–8	Teach and practice Scripture, prayer, worship, church, obedience, service, witness, and perseverance.
6	Relational belonging	By day 30	Connect the believer with a mentor, micro-group, Sunday School class, or small group.
7	Practices becoming rhythms	By day 90	Discuss what is being practiced, what is changing, and where help is needed.
8	Character-growth conversation	Around month 6	Look beneath activity for roots, virtues, fruit, obstacles, and evidence of grace.
9	Service and witness	Months 6–9	Begin a healthy service role; learn to share a testimony and pray for unbelievers.
10	Year-one review and multiplication	Around month 12	Celebrate growth, name the next season, and consider readiness to help another.

This sequence is a framework, not a set of rigid checkpoints. “Discover Our Church” might happen before baptism or right after. A teenager, a shift worker, someone with cognitive challenges, or a new believer coming out of a crisis will all need a different pace. We’ve all seen that. Flexibility is important, but don’t let anyone slip through the cracks. The support we give should fit the person, not the other way around.

What Should We Expect after Baptism?

At baptism, the church should look for a credible profession of repentance and faith, a basic understanding of the gospel, and a willing intention to follow Christ. We’re not looking for a mature Christian life offered as proof that a new Christian life has begun.

After baptism, look for responsiveness, not expertise. Is the person willing to meet, learn, worship, ask honest questions, receive correction, practice basic habits, and take the next step? A new believer might be inconsistent, but don’t let them become invisible. They may be confused, but they can be teachable. They may struggle, but they shouldn’t be left alone.

People start their walk with Christ from all sorts of places—spiritually, emotionally, relationally, mentally, and even physically. We meet them where the Lord saves them, walk with them, and trust that they’ll walk with the Lord. It’s going to be messy and often slow. There will be hard days, but there will be good ones too. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit, and it usually grows best in the soil of discipleship.

Two Scorecards, One Disciple

The safest way to measure discipleship is to separate what the church can promise from what only God can produce.

Scorecard One—Church Stewardship. Was a mentor named? Did contact occur? Was the person taught, connected, and invited to take the next step? Did the thirty-day, ninety-day, six-month, and twelve-month conversations happen? Checkboxes belong here because these are commitments the church can keep or neglect.

Scorecard Two—Christian Character Growth. Is the believer learning to live by the Spirit, receive grace, see life through biblical truth, develop Beatitude-shaped roots, practice the means of grace, grow in virtue, and bear Christlike fruit in community and mission? No holiness GPA belongs here. This is a prayerful conversation about direction, dependence, fruit, and a next step.

Lifeway’s national work identifies eight broad discipleship signposts: Bible engagement, obedience, service, witness, faith, seeking God, relationships, and living unashamed.10 Those are useful categories; the Character Tree supplies a complementary picture of how grace, practices, virtues, and fruit belong together.

From Deep Roots to Wide Witness

This is where the Christian Character Tree from my Wide Witness, Deep Roots blog series comes in handy. A course-completion list tells us if the material was covered, but the Tree asks what kind of person is actually being formed. It gives the church a map, but doesn’t turn spiritual growth into a factory assembly line.

Tree image	Formation area	A better question
Atmosphere	Holy Spirit	Is the believer learning dependence rather than religious self-effort?
Sunlight	God’s grace	Is the believer living from acceptance in Christ rather than trying to earn it?
Soil	Truth, goodness, beauty	Is Scripture reshaping what seems real, desirable, and worthy?
Seed	New life in Christ	Is gospel identity taking root through repentance, faith, and assurance?
Roots	Beatitude postures	Are humility, sorrow over sin, meekness, hunger, mercy, purity, peacemaking, and endurance deepening?
Nutrients	2 Peter 1:5–7	Is the believer making grace-enabled effort toward virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, affection, and love?
Sap	Means of grace	Are Scripture, prayer, worship, confession, fellowship, service, and witness becoming rhythms?
Trunk	Prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude	Is the believer becoming wise, just, self-governed, and courageous under pressure?
Limbs	Faith, hope, love	Is life reaching Godward and outward through trust, assurance, and love?
Fruit	Visible Christlikeness	Is the Spirit’s fruit appearing, especially when life is hard?
Orchard	Church, witness, multiplication	Is the believer contributing to the spiritual good of others?

The Tree isn’t meant to be another ladder to climb. Christian growth is more like a garden. The Spirit works through grace, truth, habits, relationships, trials, and time. Growth will be uneven. Sometimes pruning looks like loss before it looks like fruit. The goal isn’t to tape religious fruit onto dead branches. The goal is for the life of Jesus to grow from the inside out.

Dallas Willard described spiritual formation as the renovation of the inner person—thought, feeling, choice, body, relationships, and soul—under Christ.11 The Tree makes that whole-person aim visible while keeping grace and the Spirit prior to effort.

How to Describe Growth without Grading It

At each relational checkpoint, the believer and mentor can choose one description for each area they discuss: not yet introduced, learning, practicing with help, increasingly owned, or helping another. The description is not a rank. A person may be helping another learn prayer while still needing help with forgiveness.

Keep it simple: record four things—evidence of grace, an obstacle or question, one next step, and what support the church can give. Don’t write down private confessions, diagnoses, or details that don’t belong in a ministry file. Track enough to show you care, not enough to make people feel watched.

The Pastor Cannot Be the Entire System

When I was a pastor, I’d hear words like "pathway" and "scorecard" and feel a knot in my stomach. It sounded like another meeting, another spreadsheet, and another job that would end up on my desk whether anyone admitted it or not.

That reaction isn’t laziness. Pastors are already juggling preaching, counseling, hospital visits, conflict, administration, outreach, funerals, emergencies, facilities, family, and their own souls. Barna says pastors struggle most with relationships and personal well-being.12 A system that depends on pastors burning the candle at both ends isn’t a discipleship system—it’s a recipe for burnout.

Ephesians 4 says leaders are to equip the saints so the body builds itself up in love. The pastor’s job is to keep discipleship at the center, teach the vision, train the first leaders, and handle the exceptions. Someone else—maybe a post-baptism shepherd—keeps up with the list. Mentors and groups handle the relationships and practice. The church welcomes the new believer as family.

Robert Coleman emphasized Jesus’ relational pattern of association, demonstration, delegation, supervision, and reproduction.13 Marshall and Payne likewise argue that structures should serve the growth of people in the gospel rather than becoming ends in themselves.14

Teach It Until It Can Be Lived

A curriculum is useful, but information must move toward practice. A simple learning cycle is:

1. Explain one biblical truth and why it matters.

2. Model how a Christian lives it.

3. Practice the next action together.

4. Reflect on what happened and what God exposed.

5. Repeat with support until the practice becomes more natural.

6. Multiply by helping the growing believer show someone else.

Small groups can help: Lifeway found that consistent participation is associated with higher discipleship scores, while warning that attendance alone is not maturity.15 The relational setting matters because formation needs truth, example, practice, correction, encouragement, and time.

Start at Ground Zero

If your church doesn’t have a process right now, you don’t need a big launch. You just need a faithful start:

• Name one owner. Give one trusted person authority to keep the list and prompt follow-up.

• Gather one eight-week cohort. Teach several new believers together rather than multiplying pastor-led meetings.

• Train two or three mentors while the cohort meets. Let them observe, participate, and gradually lead.

• Use the two scorecards. Track church promises clearly and discuss character growth humbly.

• Review the list for fifteen minutes monthly. Celebrate movement, notice disconnection, and assign the next contact.

Beyond the Splash

We don’t have to pick between full baptisteries and deep believers, between evangelism and discipleship, or between celebrating the wedding and building the marriage. Jesus put together what we often split apart: make disciples, baptize them, teach them to obey, and do it together.

The most important question after the water settles isn’t, “Did we get the picture?” It’s, “Who knows this person now?” Who’s going to call? Who will open the Bible with them? Who will listen to the first doubt without panicking? Who will notice when they’re missing? Who will celebrate their first costly obedience? Who will help them become the kind of disciple who can help someone else?

Baptism deserves a celebration. Discipleship deserves a spot on the calendar.

The splash is just the beginning. Let’s make sure the walk gets started too.

Endnotes

Scripture quotations and references are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

1. Paperlust Admin, "Average Wedding Cost in 2026: Full US Budget Breakdown," Paperlust, June 23, 2026,https://paperlust.co/blog/average-wedding-cost-2026/.

2. Ramblewood Co., "What Is a Full-Service Wedding Planner? Duties, Costs & Benefits Explained," Ramblewood Co., accessed August 18, 2026,https://www.ramblewoodco.com/what-is-a-full-service-wedding-planner-duties-costs-benefits-explained

3. Aaron Earls, “Southern Baptists See Attendance and Baptism Gains amid Membership Declines,” Lifeway Research, May 5, 2026, https://research.lifeway.com/2026/05/05/southern-baptists-see-attendance-and-baptism-gains-amid-membership-declines/

4. Aaron Earls, “Adults Account for Most Baptisms in SBC Congregations,” Lifeway Research, August 13, 2026, https://research.lifeway.com/2026/08/13/adults-account-for-most-baptisms-in-sbc-congregations/.

5. Southern Baptist Convention, “The Baptist Faith and Message 2000,” arts. VI–VII, amended June 14, 2023, https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/.

6. Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), xi–xii.

7. Lifeway Research staff, “Lifeway Research’s State of Discipleship Insights Report Equips Leaders for Intentional Disciple Making,” Lifeway Newsroom, June 3, 2026, https://news.lifeway.com/2026/06/03/lifeway-researchs-state-of-discipleship-insights-report-equips-leaders-for-intentional-disciple-making/

8. Aaron Earls, “Most Churches Rarely Evaluate Their Discipleship Strategies,” Lifeway Newsroom, October 7, 2025, https://news.lifeway.com/2025/10/07/most-churches-rarely-evaluate-their-discipleship-strategies/.

9. Aaron Earls, “Lifeway Research Finds Few Pastors Believe Discipleship Tops Their Churches’ Efforts,” Lifeway Newsroom, November 4, 2025, https://news.lifeway.com/2025/11/04/lifeway-research-finds-few-pastors-believe-discipleship-tops-their-churches-efforts/

10. Lifeway Research staff, “Lifeway Research’s State of Discipleship Insights Report.”

11. Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2002).

12. Barna Group, “The Strengths & Struggles of Today’s Pastors,” June 10, 2025, https://www.barna.com/trends/pastoral-flourishing/.

13. Robert E. Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2006).

14. Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine: The Ministry Mind-Shift That Changes Everything (Kingsford, Australia: Matthias Media, 2009).

15. Aaron Earls, “Small Group Participation Linked to Higher Discipleship Scores, Lifeway Research Finds,” Lifeway Newsroom, August 4, 2026, https://news.lifeway.com/2026/08/04/small-group-participation-linked-to-higher-discipleship-scores-lifeway-research-finds/.