I startle awake, my pillow soaked with the sweat of disturbed sleep. I can feel my heartbeat in my ears, reminding me that all is not well. I glance at the alarm clock for the tenth or eleventh time this night. Three o’clock. In a few short hours the first burnt-orange hints of daylight will spill over the horizon, and all hope of sleep will be lost.
The evangelistic campaign has been going well; there are enough people in the audience that I will be spending the day making brief friendly visits on scores of doorsteps, assessing how well the message is taking root. And although I am the sort of introvert that does not particularly enjoy knocking on doors, it is not the thought of visitation that robs me of sleep. It is rather the knowledge of what I have promised to the churches for tonight: I will be making an altar call.
I flip my pillow to the dry side and grumble to myself about Charles Finney, the preacher who pioneered altar calls as we’ve come to experience them in Western Christianity. Why, I mutter, did he have to put preachers under this kind of pressure?
It started simply. Finney introduced the “anxious bench”[1] near the front of the auditorium where convicted sinners could come to pray and receive counsel. It was a method of generating an immediate response to the gospel, and it has proved to be a powerful tool in leading congregations to make a decision for Christ. Others adopted the practice, and it persisted until it became the walk-to-the-front appeals (set to a mass choir singing “Just as I Am”) that became the hallmark of Billy Graham crusades.
For people who are not particularly demonstrative—such as the Dutch, the tribe from which I hail—the whole affair can feel a little too emotionally vulnerable: my kind just doesn’t walk to the front with every eye in the room tracking them. We make decisions quietly, privately.[2] And if participating in a public altar call is uncomfortable, the very thought of conducting one can be positively panic-inducing.
What if I’m not convincing enough? What if I end up becoming one of those poor slobs who stands at the front for 20 or 30 minutes, pleading with an unresponsive room? “Is there just one person here? Who’s going to take a stand tonight? Anybody?”
We’ve all seen—and pitied—that preacher. It’s brutally awkward.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m absolutely not opposed to altar calls. How could I be? If you craft them properly, with an understanding of how God operates in redeeming the lost, they work amazingly well. If you don’tgive your audience a chance to respond to the call of Christ, you may actually be training them not to respond to the overwhelming conviction that often accompanies the hearing of God’s Word. You create the impression that it’s OK to do nothing about what they’re learning. People who sense the leading of the Spirit feel a tremendous urge to do something with their conviction, and providing a mechanism for response while that conviction is burning brightly . . . well, it’s an incredibly good thing to do. And so even though it lies well outside my comfort zone, I do it.
The sweat-soaked pillow was many years ago now. I still get a littleanxious about public speaking, but not like I did in the past. Where I used to feel physically ill, I now feel nervous tension, and a little nervousness is a good thing. If you aren’t somewhat concerned about the outcome of what you’re doing, you may not have fully comprehended what it is that you’re participating in: you’re partnering with heaven itself.
A Crucial Distinction
What mitigated my fear? Many years ago I realized something that set me free: I cannot convert people. Neither can you. There is no logical argument you can present that will convince a roomful of people to be interested in Christ. How do I know that for sure? The greatest evangelist of the Christian era convinced me. Writing to the troubled church of Corinth, Paul reminded them:
“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:12-14, ESV).
You and I are not making converts—we are finding them.
If someone is not interested in spiritual matters, there isn’t much I can do about it, apart from praying for that person. What I can do, however, is appeal to those who have already been brought under conviction by the Spirit. That’s a completely different enterprise from trying to convincepeople. Ellen White provides a fascinating description of how the process works, in a passage that deals with the evangelistic training of the disciples:
“As Jesus ministered to the vast multitudes that gathered about Him, His disciples were in attendance, eager to do His bidding and to lighten His labor. They assisted in arranging the people, bringing the afflicted ones to the Saviour, and promoting the comfort of all. They watched for interested hearers, explained the Scriptures to them, and in various ways worked for their spiritual benefit. They taught what they had learned of Jesus, and were every day obtaining a rich experience.”[3]
Don’t miss the sequence of events, because it still works the same way 2,000 years later. Jesus is the minister, the one who drives the whole process—not me. He’s the voice the crowd needs to hear, and that is still true today, in spite of the fact that Jesus is no longer physically present with us. In our time He speaks to hearts from heaven’s sanctuary through the voice of the Holy Spirit. Conviction is a product of His voice, not mine. Repentance is God’s work, a gift to sinners (see Rom. 2:4).
While Jesus was speaking to hearts, the disciples were watching the faces of people, trying to discern interest. When they found it, they opened the Scriptures to those individuals in particular. It was—and still is—a winning formula, because when someone hears the voice of the Spirit to the heart, they will instinctively recognize that same voice in the Scriptures, a collection of documents He inspired the prophets to compose. The voice will feel familiar, right. The job of the disciples? To help people connect the dots and then invite them home.
That understanding—that God handles spiritual awakening, and that I cannot manufacture it—made me breathe a little easier when it came time for an appeal. You and I are not making converts—we are finding them. It is the greatest scavenger hunt in the universe, and it’s a lot more fun than working under the misguided assumption that I am somehow in charge of the process. I am being asked to show up, to help put a human face on the message: when the disciples discovered interested hearers, they not only explained the Scriptures to them; they also “taught what they had learned of Jesus.”
When people sense the Spirit pulling them toward Christ, and then find confirmation in the Book the Spirit composed, they will often next look at practicing believers with a new sense of hope. They’re hoping it’s true, and you become an exhibit of God’s grace, an example of someone who has already made the decision. You are not required to be perfect at this point; nor are you expected to give a long discourse on the subject of salvation. Just a few words will suffice. Just tell them how much Jesus means to you, and why you trust Him.
Altar calls have become easier for me. I no longer speak as someone who is trying to generate conviction; instead I appeal to the interested, with the understanding that they are already moving in the right direction. God got to them long before I did.[4] My task is to appeal to the conviction that they already feel, or have felt for weeks, months, or years. I am to invite the convicted to do something about it. I’m issuing RSVP invitations on behalf of the real Host of the meeting.
We’ve been counseled to harvest onlyripe fruit, and to be careful of it. “I began to gather the fruit near by,” Sister White reported from an important vision, “but very carefully, for fear of picking the green berries, which were so mingled with the ripe fruit that I could pick only one or two berries from a cluster.”[5] It doesn’t mean that you don’t keep green berries in your circle of influence; of courseyou do, so that you’re present when they suddenly ripen.
Getting up front is still really uncomfortable, but I’ll tell you one thing: when I realized how little I was actually in charge, my pillow started getting a whole lot drier.
[1] Many refer to it as the “mourner’s bench.”
[2] Another reason that home visitation is so important: many in the audience simply won’t make a decision if it means exposing your emotions in front of a crowd of strangers.
[3] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898, 1940), p. 349.
[4] Read the book of Acts and pay attention to the people brought into the church. They are not cold interests; God always gets to them first and awakens interest.
[5] Ellen G. White, Gospel Workers (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1915), p. 136.
