Dozens of Orlando churches are ready to host Southern Baptists from all over America for Crossover 2026 leading up to the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in June.
Evangelism will be happening throughout The City Beautiful June 1–7, and the portal for churches and individuals to register to be involved is now open.
J.J. Washington, national director of personal evangelism with the North American Mission Board, said Central Florida churches are on board.
“We have nearly 100 churches participating this year at some level,” Washington said.
Many of those are using Crossover to promote a special “Harvest Sunday” on June 7, encouraging church members to invite lost friends to a special evangelistic service. Others are partnering with Southern Baptist seminary students who will be in town to help with door-to-door evangelism.
Still other churches will be doing community events and will need a lot of outside help.
Of the 64 churches in Ridge Baptist Association in and around Winter Haven, Fla., at least half are participating in Crossover in some capacity, said Josh Dryer, associational mission strategist.
“My vision was to be able to provide a free mission trip for any SBC church that wanted to come and be involved in what we were doing,” Dryer said. “And so we’re actually providing accommodations and food to the SBC churches that want to come alongside one of our local churches here that’ll be doing that project on Saturday and then the Harvest Sunday.”
So far, 11 Ridge Baptist Association churches are gearing up to host at least seven mission teams that have committed to come stay on site. “We’re praying for another two or three (teams) to meet the needs of the local churches that have projects established,” Dryer said.
Even now, many of the association’s churches are going through a 90-day prayer challenge using a book of prayers written by local pastors and published by the association.
The effort is designed to “give us God’s heart for our community, to share the gospel, and for God to do a great work here,” Dryer said, adding that many of his churches also plan to participate in the June 7 Harvest Sunday event.
Intentional evangelism is a great need in Polk County, where Ridge Baptist Association is located. According to Dryer, the once rural area is the fifth fastest-growing county in the United States.
“We’re still a country county,” Dryer said. “Our people who live here, they remember the orange groves and a lot of them grew up in that kind of agrarian area — but right now, almost every one of our churches has a brand-new subdivision within a half mile of the church.
“Even our most country churches, they’re being impacted by the mass influx of people. And what I tell our folks is, ‘God is replacing those orange groves with souls.’”
Washington said Crossover allows churches to plan the event or outreach that makes the most sense for them.
“Churches have the liberty to create their own contextualized outreach plan while NAMB resources, trains and supports them in the execution of their outreach plans,” he said.
Crossover 2026 will feature the usual block parties, sports outreaches, day camps and door-to-door evangelism of previous events, and also will offer new opportunities for ministry.
“A new twist this year is the prison ministry event,” Washington said. “Florida Baptists have partnered with Bill Glass Day of Champions to do an evangelistic event at a correctional facility in the Orlando area.”
Again this year, NAMB will host a Crossover Student Rally both Friday, June 5, in Oviedo, Fla., and Saturday, June 6, in Umatilla, Fla. Shane Pruitt, NAMB director of Next Gen evangelism, will speak both nights. The student rallies are well attended and have become highlights of Crossover the last few years.
Of the 100 or so participating Orlando-area churches, 14 are Hispanic and 21 are Haitian, Washington said, adding that he fully expects the number to climb higher than 100 in the next few weeks.
He said Florida Baptist Convention Executive Director Stephen Rummage has “set the bar high” for Crossover Orlando.
“He would like to see 1,000 churches participating in Crossover, 10,000 gospel conversations, and 1,000 salvations,” Washington said of Rummage’s goals. “Conservatively, we will need about 800 volunteers to pull off Crossover this year.”
Dryer said he hopes to see lasting effects from the intentional effort.
“We’re praying that God would do a great work in Polk County through Crossover,” he said. “Where I’m hoping that we’ll see fruit from our work would be that we’re really having an individual focus on our friends, families, coworkers and neighbors that we already know, that we already live with here in this community, that God would open up doors of opportunity for us to share the gospel with them, that they would be saved, and that they would get connected in a local church here in eastern Polk County and have their lives transformed by Christ.”
The Crossover event and registration portal, which includes a comprehensive overview of Crossover activities, is here: https://serve.namb.net/.
— Laura Erlanson is managing editor of Baptist Press.