By Jeff Finley
When the pastors and members of New Life Ministries began praying for an increase in baptism, they didn’t fully anticipate the level of breakthrough that would be coming to this Free Methodist congregation in Endicott, New York.
“We had been praying for one baptism a month for some time, and we’re happy to see some folks coming to Christ and going under the waters of baptism,” Lead Pastor Joe Wickman shared in a conversation with Brett Heintzman on a recent episode of “The Light + Life Podcast.”
Wickman explained that a few months after “a significant act of reconciliation” with “a spiritual healing for the church,” church leaders sensed the Lord leading them to hold New Life’s first “open baptism.”
New Life traditionally has asked people being baptized to share a testimony with a video.
“It’s fantastic, and it’s not for everybody,” Wickman said. “We had some folks that were waiting to be baptized. They had come to faith in Jesus. They were in it to win it, but they were holding out because there were just some barriers that were artificial that we had put in there that weren’t necessary.”
Leading up to the open baptism Sunday, New Life announced that baptism would be open to anyone with faith in Jesus Christ and commitment to live with Him as Lord along with the willingness to be baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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“New Life leaders and members had been praying for a spiritual hunger that would lead to baptism.”
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“We had 20 people sign up in advance, and we thought, ‘Praise God. That’s more than we suspected we would baptize all year.’ But on the day, we had 28 more people come forward to be baptized on the spot,” Wickman said. “We ended up having 48 people baptized in a day, which was four years’ worth of what we were praying for. Then it broke out from there, and the Lord continued to move.”
New Life decided that when future baptisms occurred, they would open them up to other people. The congregation purchased affordable clothing so that people would be able to change into dry clothes if they answered an open call to baptism.
“One story that touched my heart was a woman who began attending, and she lives right in our community here around the church, just a few blocks away,” Wickman said. “With tears in her eyes, she explained … ‘I only live a couple blocks away. I started coming here a few weeks ago. I committed my life to Christ two weeks ago, and would like to be baptized. Don’t worry. I live close. I can walk home all soaking wet.”
Wickman said the temperature was 20 degrees that day, yet “she was willing to walk home sopping wet in the freezing cold.” Thankfully, New Life had dry clothes available for her.
New Life leaders and members had been praying for a spiritual hunger that would lead to baptism, and Wickman realized the Lord answered their prayers.
“This is 20 some years of us praying for this sort of response, and we ended up having 113 baptisms in 2024,” said Wickman, who added that the Genesis Conference office staff contacted New Life twice to make sure there wasn’t a typo because of the huge increase in the baptism numbers that the local church reported to the conference.
For the first open baptism Sunday, Wickman preached about baptism — the first time he had devoted an entire sermon to the topic. Wickman had not heard other pastors preach much on baptism either.
“I had never heard an entire message just on baptism and what it is and how it works, and even walking through the mechanics of it,” said Wickman, who also had another man share “a testimony of what the baptism experience was like for him and how the Lord used this as sort of a culmination of God calling him to live for Christ.”
New Life has decided to limit restrictions for baptism to only what is biblically required. That doesn’t mean everyone gets baptized.
Wickman said New Life has chosen to “equip our pastors to do on-the-spot interviews, and we have told people, ‘We think you should wait.’ The question of rebaptism comes up. Sometimes there’s clarity that needs to be gained, and so we have told people who came up to be interviewed, ‘No, I think this requires another conversation. Let’s meet together this week and talk about it.’”
Regarding the requests for some people to meet for further discussion, Wickman said, “Nobody’s gotten mad and left the church, and those have led to rich conversations.”
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“I’m just trying to see, ‘Lord, what are you doing?’ and just follow one step at a time.” – Joe Wickman
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On the Move
Wickman said he’s also hearing about “a movement of the Holy Spirit” from other pastors in the Genesis Conference and elsewhere in the United States.
“In the soup of the culture we’re living in where everything is gray, the clear call of the gospel of Jesus Christ is becoming more and more attractive as it’s held in relief with the ambiguity of our culture,” Wickman said. “‘Repent and believe the good news’ seems to be more striking now when it’s held in tension with all else that is the backdrop in our culture where you can’t be certain of anything.”
Instead of “railing against the culture,” Wickman encouraged “enunciating the clear call to faith in Jesus Christ.” He added that when people respond and meet God, “the desire to make this official, to make it public, to go all in, this suddenly becomes compelling. We haven’t twisted a single arm, but the Lord seems to be evoking a response, and we’re overjoyed.”
Decades of Prayer
Wickman doesn’t just know New Life from the perspective of a pastor.
“I grew up in the church I pastor,” he said. “I’ve been part of this ministry since the 1980s when my folks started bringing me to church as a little boy. I know that there’s been godly people in this church praying those prayers of revival for decades, and I prayed them constantly, but then when it shows up, it’s still a surprise. I’ve told people again and again, ‘Listen; this is God’s doing. We’re not that good.’”
Flexible to the Spirit
That doesn’t mean pastors and church members don’t play a role in revival. Wickman emphasized that churches must be receptive and willing to be more open-ended and willing to deviate from their worship schedule.
New Life has two Sunday morning services, and church leaders initially expressed concern that the open baptisms could cause the first service to overlap the time of the second service and cause parking problems.
“The team needed to know that I was willing to flex as the Holy Spirit moved,” said Wickman who told team members, “If God so moves, the people are responding, and there’s more people to be interviewed and baptized — if one service blends into the next, that’s just going to have to be OK. And if people have to walk another block because they had to park away from the building, that’s going to be OK.”
This summer, New Life decided to receive Communion weekly for seven weeks.
“We’ve never done that as long as I’ve been a part of this church, and I’m just intrigued,” Wickman said. “I’m just trying to see, ‘Lord, what are you doing?’ and just follow one step at a time. … The Lord seems to be ministering to the congregation. I know he’s certainly ministering to me as we participate in celebrating Communion in this stretch.”
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Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light + Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church in Indianapolis. He and his wife, Wabash and New South Conference Superintendent Jen Finley, are the parents of a teen son. Jeff has a bachelor’s degree in English from Greenville University and a master’s degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois with additional graduate studies in journalism at Southern Illinois University. He serves on the boards of the Greenville University Alumni Association, Friends of Immanuel and Gene R. Alston Memorial Foundation.
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