Five and a half years ago, I preached my first sermon as the pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church. The minister of music stopped me before the service with a question. He wanted to know how I’d be making the altar call.
I was confused. Prior to this Sunday morning, I’d been at MVBC three times, and not once did I see anyone give an altar call. I assumed the church had decided long ago to abandon the practice. I was wrong.
As it turns out, my church has a long history of closing the service with an appeal to walk the aisle in order to join the church, recommit one’s life to the Lord or make a public profession of faith. The three Sundays I had attended were exceptions to the rule!
In fact, many of the members had come to see the altar call as the primary means the church used to reach the lost. They saw the altar call as synonymous with evangelism.
Why not give an altar call?
I trust that many who give altar calls have the best of intentions.
In the early ’90s, I attended a church whose pastor ended the service by asking every person in the congregation to close their eyes and bow their head. Next, he would invite anyone who wanted to receive Christ to raise their hand and look toward the pulpit.
For about 30 seconds, the pastor would scan around the hall, notice the raised hands and in a calm, soothing voice say, “Yes, brother, I see you. Good, sister, amen,” and so on. I believe this pastor meant the best for these seekers.
Nonetheless, I’m convinced that the altar call does more harm than good.
The practice of granting people immediate assurance of salvation—without taking the time to test the credibility of their profession—seems unwise at best and scandalous at worst. It is unwise because the pastor cannot sufficiently know the person he’s about to affirm is a Christian. It is scandalous because it replaces the difficult and narrow gate designed by our Savior (Mark 8:34; Matt. 7:14) with an easy and wide gate designed by us.
With the best of intentions, practitioners of the altar call have given many unsaved persons the false confidence that they truly know Jesus.[1]
But that’s not all. The altar call has a tendency to put the congregation’s focus in the wrong place.
After the Word is preached, members and visitors alike should be examining their own hearts. Everyone should be giving serious attention to how the message calls him or her to respond. But the altar call, ironically, tends to produce the opposite response. Instead of self-examination it leads to audience-examination. People are looking around, wondering who’s going to go forward. And if no one moves, one wonders, did the pastor fail? Or worse, did God take the day off?
These are just a few reasons why I think it’s unwise to use the altar call for evangelism.
How to evangelize without an altar call.
How should a pastor who rejects the altar call think about evangelism in a public worship service? Put another way, what does it look like for a corporate worship service to be marked by evangelistic zeal?
Here are seven answers I strive for in the services I lead:
1. Be earnest.
Be earnest. Though there is nothing more important for a preacher than fidelity to gospel truth, earnestness must be a close second. God uses men whose hearts are gripped by the tragedy of sin and the reality of salvation. Until the doctrine of God’s amazing grace has settled in a preacher’s bones, it will never flash from his lips.
2. Be clear about the gospel.
Be clear about the gospel. Every passage of Scripture is a gospel text. In all of Esther, the name of God is never mentioned, and yet his handiwork is on every page. A pastor who wants to see sinners saved will faithfully teach the Bible, showing his congregation how the person and work of Christ is the point of every text.
