I hadn’t
realized how just rare it has become these days to hear altar calls—the
act of inviting hearers to receive Christ after a sermon—in churches lately
until my memory was jolted back to this phenomenon when I chanced upon a
pamphlet by Iain H. Murray titled The Invitation System where
he examines the merits of this methodology of soul winning.
While growing up, it used to be a common feature of almost every Sunday church
service. But it seems, it has been placed on the backburner in modern times.
This may probably be as a result of the sharp decline in evangelistic
outdoor crusades which mostly served as avenues for such altar calls. Another
possible reason, among others, could be the widespread decline in the preaching
of the unadulterated gospel in our churches where the simplicity of the saving
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, has been replaced with motivational messages
that are sure to garner impressive crowds that will fill church auditoriums.
Times have indeed changed so I was curious to find out his views of this
phenomenon. Right from the beginning of his examination, Murray unequivocally
affirms a clear scriptural stance on the proclamation of the gospel as being
the “divinely ordained means for the conviction and conversion of sinners” and
does not dispute the fact that “wherever preaching has ceased to require a response
and wherever hearers are left with the impression that there is no divine
command requiring their repentance and faith, true Christianity has withered
away.”
His concern is with how the whole
idea of inviting hearers to walk down the aisle to the front of the crowd has
come to be identified with salvation. The author tackles head-on, three of the
main reasons that the popularizers of this system resort to as basis for
adopting it namely;
·
That Christ always called people publicly,
·
‘Coming out’
it is said, ‘settles it and seals it’ and
·
The
invitation has value as a visual demonstration to the uncommitted.
To make his case even more appealing, he cites such people as Billy
Graham who are renowned for this practice.
Regarding
the first reason, Murray took time to elucidate some of the scriptural verses
which are often quoted (and out of context at that) in support of this system.
One such verse is Matt.10:32, ‘Whosoever shall
confess me before men…’ and remarks rhetorically that “Is Christ here saying
that by an act of confession we become Christians or is He
teaching that one indispensable mark of those who are Christians is that they live a life
which openly acknowledges Him?” He observes that “the whole invitation system
inevitably gives the impression that ‘confessing Christ’ by moving forward is
in order to conversion.”
The second reason for this system
seem to find its support more in its psychological effectiveness than the
seeking to engender sincere and truly genuine response from hearers. The idea
behind this technique is to stir the emotions of hearers to a high pitch and
then pressing for a decision for conversion in that very moment. This whole
attempts betrays our distrust in the preaching of the word of God alone for
salvation so much so that we have resorted to emotionally manipulative schemes
for forced conversions.
The third reason immediately brought
to mind a recent incident that made some waves in the Christian blogosphere
about a year ago when it was brought to the fore that Pastor Steven Furtick and
his Elevation Church have produced a baptism manual with the telling title Spontaneous
Baptism How-To Guide.
This guide teaches, among other
strategies that, some people are to be positioned at certain vantage points in
the service where they will be visible to all and are to pretend to be
responding to pastor Furtick’s alter call and by this act encourage the
undecided to also walk to the front and make a profession of faith and be
baptized. The idea behind this strategy is that once the undecided hearer sees
very decent people walk the aisle to the front, they will be convinced
Christianity is not only for the riff-raffs of society but the respectable
members as well. It is very troubling to say the least that this man made
technique though might produce the large number of ‘conversions’ as it is
designed to achieve, it smacks of nothing but false conversions.
In the end, Murray succeeded in
convincing me that The Invitation System as a method for conversion ought to be
discarded since firstly, it has no biblical basis; secondly it is a fairly
modern phenomenon popularized by such evangelists as Billy Graham and lacks any
historic backing and thirdly it gives rise to a pragmatist approach where it is
the end—in this case high numbers of conversions—that justifies the means
rather than what is biblically sound.
This is however not to say that preachers should be precluded from
requiring a response from hearers after a presentation of the gospel but
rather, that it should be made clear to hearers that walking to the front is
not by that very fact a testament to their conversion but rather repentance and
faith in the finished work of Christ on Calvary alone is their only hope of
salvation.
