"Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." ~ 2 Timothy 2:15
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the single greatest treasure in our universe. As Christians sold out for the Gospel, it is our God called responsibility to, as clearly and adequately as we are able to present the Gospel to our World, completely and correctly. Certainly we don't require a doctorate in theology to do so, but as God's Word calls us, we must be prepared to teach and disciple.
I feel very strongly about the importance of receptor based communication of the Gospel. That is to say, teaching the Gospel in such a way that the Biblical truth is understood as clearly by those learning as it is intended to be communicated by those teaching. Over the course of the past several months I have written a series of articles that talk about just what it means to be prepared to disciple and to teach clearly and completely. It is important to always keep in mind that God is sovereign and He can certainly work for His Glory in all kinds of circumstances and through various means of evangelism. No matter how well prepared we may feel, we are babbling infants compared to God and His Word. But there is no adequate excuse for not doing the work we are called to as Christians (Luke 14:12-24), and we should do everything we can, using our gifts, talents, abilities and resources, to give our very best to Him; in our time, in our study and in our relationships.
Communication is about communicating.
"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;"
I Peter 3:15
This is a topic that is sensitive to many, it is personal and it is important; and it is because of this importance that I feel we need to step back and take a much closer look. The sinners prayer is an issue that we must wrestle with, but we must first understand just what the issue is surrounding it.
As was the case with the article regarding altar calls, this may be the very way in which you came to know the Lord. Your testimony may certainly be that you "invited Jesus into your heart" by uttering the words of the sinners prayer; and if you have a wonderful relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, Praise Him! It is, once again, not my intention to disparage the testimony of those who have come to Christ in this way. It is my hope to draw attention to the multitudes who have spoken "the sinners prayer" and gone on into lives of sin, with no relationship in Christ, yet believing in their minds that they are Christians. It is my hope to encourage you to strive to do the work of discipleship to the greatest of your God given ability, using His Word as the foundation of the Truth that it is.
The question is, just because something is pro-active and achieves large numbers of apparent converts, does this qualify it as Biblical or sufficient? At the risk of sounding like a broken record; Biblically speaking, our best is not sufficient (Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10), so our mediocre is certainly not. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is worth taking the time to communicate well. It is my contention that "the sinners prayer" is the product of a desire to evangelize (in our minds) that does not express adequately our understanding for the need of solid Biblical discipleship that reflects our own beautiful, rich and maturing relationship with the Saviour. It is not my contention that the sinners prayer is wrong or sinful. It is my contention that "the sinners prayer", as it exists in evangelism today, misses the mark and is most often unwise. Bare with me, this will become apparent.
There is no single specific written example of the sinners prayer (in scripture or otherwise), generally speaking it is some incarnation or another that includes the major "points of salvation", but more often than not it neglects some important facet of a relationship with Christ, while it tragically over-simplifies the richness of a relationship with the Lord of the Universe. The following example was taken from a children's evangelism booklet and is indicative of an average presentation of the sinners prayer (note that it completely disregards any mention of a need of repentance);
"Dear Jesus, I know you are God and you created all things. You are perfect; I am a sinner. You are the only one who can save me. I believe you died on the cross and took the punishment for my sin. I trust you as my Saviour. Thank you for loving me so much. I know you will keep your promise to take me to heaven to be with you."
The dangers of such a gospel presentation can be very similar to that of the altar call. Below I have revised Pastor Ryan Kelly's list to reflect some issues with the sinners prayer.
1. The sinners prayer is simply and completely absent from the pages of the Bible.
2. The sinners prayer very easily confuses the physical act of “praying” with the spiritual act of “coming to Christ.” These two can happen simultaneously, but too often people believe that coming to Christ is uttering a prayer (and vice-versa).
3. The sinners prayer can easily deceive people about the reality of their spiritual state and the biblical basis for assurance. The Bible never offers us assurance on the ground that we “uttered a prayer.”
4. The sinners prayer can mislead us to think that salvation happens only by a prayer that is spoken aloud.
5. The sinners prayer can confuse people regarding “sacred” things and “sacred” words. The prayer itself can become an idol, and a totem to cling to.
6. The sinners prayer is not sensitive to our cautious and relational age where most people come to faith over a period of time and often with the interaction of a good friend. The sinners prayer is something that is most often rushed into and pressured to be spoken for humanistic reasons.
7. The sinners prayer is often seen as the "way to come to Christ", and the important distinctives of repentance and submission are lost.
8. The motivation to speak the sinners prayer is most often a selfish one, strictly to keep the individual out of hell. This condition of the heart has not achieved a level of surrender to the Lord that He requires.
As with altar calls, the connection between the sinners prayer and easy believeism is in the timing and pressure. The church at large has been seeking for hundreds of years to develop formulas and edicts from scripture to simplify every aspect of Christian living; including but not limited to, Church structure, Bible version, rules for living, evangelism & Gospel, business, culture etc. It is far easier to follow a set of rules laid down by church leadership than to seek the Lord in His Word daily as we are commanded (Psalm 34:10, 1 Chronicles 16:11, 1 Thessalonians 5:17). This attitude of "simplifying" our relationship with God has spilled over (as it is wont) into the way in which we evangelize. (I say evangelize so that you will know what I am talking about, but Biblically speaking, evangelism is not simply something we "do", we are all called to evangelize in our very lives. Matthew 28:16-20) Yet we have reduced evangelism, or perhaps better - discipleship, to a formula, and in doing so we have done the greatest injustice to our Saviour and His Gospel. The over-simplification of this facet of Christian living is a reflection of a deeper problem within the church. Christianity is about a relationship with the Lord of the Universe, yet we do not value our relationship with Him enough to come before Him daily with our everything. We make our rules, so that instead of coming to Him we can simply look to our rules and move on, missing His leading in our lives. This shirking of relationship is reflected in the way we worship, the way we live, the way we evangelize and the way we understand Him. This misunderstanding of who God is (as He is described throughout scripture in His attributes) then warps our presentation of Him to others and very easily allows us to misrepresent what it means to have salvation in Him.
Living Christ, surrendered to him or not, is a reflection of our relationship with him. The following spoken word video most graphically expounds the absolute necessity of taking up our cross daily and following Him. Our attitude in Christ will affect the way in which we disciple others.
Biblical discipleship is a lot of work, and involves building relationships and teaching through the Gospel. It is done out of a desire to minister and bring the Gospel in a permanent and multiplying way. That it might be understood for the beautiful Truth that it is, and grow.
Last summer I had a teenager tell me she had "become a Christian" every summer for nine summers at Bible Camp - but she couldn't tell me the first thing about the Gospel other than she "prayed the prayer" every year. It begs the question, had she missed the Gospel of Jesus Christ because we were far to focused on the end of the story instead of the context of the story - the details?
The Gospel of Jesus Christ begins with God. It must. Christianity is about a relationship with Christ, yet we glaze over who He is and skip right to the end, encouraging people to engage in a relationship with a God they do not know. Doing them (and the Gospel) the greatest disservice in the process. The idea of "Get them saved and teach them later" is not a Biblical one, is dangerous and is all too common. It forsakes the necessity of having any understanding of the rejecting our sin for the sake of Christ... this Truth of the Gospel is not something that can be "done later" it is part and parcel in coming into a reconciled relationship with Him.
This may shock you, and if it does, this series of articles has been written for you. Speaking the sinners prayer does not save people, it does not usher masses of people into the kingdom. Just like walking the aisle to an altar call doesn't save, the sinners prayer can so often be a path to a "false conversion". Yet we evangelize as though these magic words will usher people into the Kingdom of Heaven. We do no work to teach or to ask our young "convert" any questions about what they understand of God or sin or mankind, but we goad them into muttering a half hearted sinners prayer as though this is indeed sufficient to save. Then we wonder why so many fall away.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’" ~ Matthew 7:21-23
A missionary friend of mine who serves through street evangelism encountered a woman on one occasion and presented her with a Gospel tract, as so often he does. She happily accepted it announcing that she had already "said the prayer". In fact she was so excited about this prayer that she had it tattooed on the calf of her leg. You see, she had no real understanding of the gospel, yet she had made an idol out of the words themselves; as though it were those very words alone that had saved her, when in fact she had not been "saved " at all. With no understanding of God in His Holiness, and man in our separation from Him by sin, and repentance of that sin before the Cross, there can be no reconciliation, no matter what words may be spoken.
• Between 1995 and 2005, Assemblies of God churches reported an amazing 5,339,144 decisions for Christ. Their net gain in attendance was 221,790. That means that 5,117,354 (over five million) decisions could not be accounted for.
• In Sacramento, California, a combined crusade yielded more than 2,000 commitments. One church followed up on fifty-two of those decisions and could not find one true convert.
• In Leeds, England, a visiting American speaker acquired 400 decisions for a local church. Six weeks later, only two were still committed and they eventually fell away.
• In November 1970, a number of churches combined for a convention in Fort Worth, Texas, and secured 30,000 decisions. Six months later, the follow-up
committee could find only thirty still continuing in their faith.
You can read an excellent example of Christ avoiding a "simple" Gospel presentation for the sake of a false conversion in Matthew 19:16-22. Christ, could very easily have led this young man in a prayer, he was clearly "Interested in things of the Lord". But He didn't, he challenged the young man with surrendering his life, this challenge brought out the true heart of the young man and he ultimately chose to follow that with which his affections truly lay. How many of us would simply have led the man in the sinners prayer and pronounced Him saved? God did no such thing.
Another excellent example of a Gospel presentation is Paul and the Phillipian jailer in Acts 16:25-34. The jailer asks what he must do to be saved, concerned with saving his physical self, Paul and Silas answer him with respect to how he could be saved spiritually. The two men then taught Him from God's Word and implored Him to Believe on the Lord. They did not sit him down and ask of him to "repeat after me", they taught about God and His Word and what salvation in Him is.
When we presume to say "repeat after me" what position do we put ourselves in Spiritually between the person we are discipling and God? We presume upon them to make a huge assumption.
If we have done the work commanded of us, to disciple and to teach, there will be no need for us to teach a prayer to anyone, or have them "repeat after me". The convicting Word of God will do it's work. When a person, in whom the Holy Spirit is working, comes to understand the Holiness of God, they will all but collapse in humility and joy for their salvation. They will mourn for their sin and seek to place it at the foot of the cross; there will very seldom be a need for studied words of "salvation" from the back of a booklet. There will be a complete and utter change of heart, that is salvation.
This is an excellent comment from a missionary "With all of the controversy around the sinner's prayer I have encountered over the years, I have finally come to the conclusion that I have no problem with the sinner's prayer... as long as it is prayed by the sinner. It is not called the "Saint's Prayer" for a reason. In Luke 18 we find a publican praying a sinner's prayer that I can not find fault with... and he was not coaxed, bribed or enticed by someone else as far as we know to pray it." (You can read this example in Luke 18:9-14.)
The repentant prayer of a sinner, not as a written creed, but as an honest outpouring of a contrite heart for the Grace of a Holy God is not something that should be condemned, criticized or snatched away. As I mentioned at the outset of this blog post, I am not seeking to condemn, but to implore; that we might all seek to disciple and to teach not seek to convict and to save. I will begin to talk about just how this might be achieved in the next blog.
Please take the ten minutes to listen to the below illustration from Paul Washer, it may help to clarify where I have not.
This is, once again, an issue with a rather broad spectrum of ideas with respect to evangelism and The Gospel of Jesus Christ. Although the altar call is generally understood to be a product of decisionism, it is most often an accompaniment of an easy believeism presentation. You can read about these issues in my most recent blog post.
There are those of you who may read this, who came to Christ as a result of an altar call. That may very well be your testimony, and Praise the Lord that you have a relationship with the Savior. My intention here is not to disparage the testimony of those who have walked the aisle, but to draw attention to the multitudes who have walked the aisle and gone on into lives of sin, with no relationship in Christ, yet believing in their minds that they are Christians. The question is, just because something is pro-active and achieves large numbers of apparent converts, does this qualify it as Biblical or sufficient? A friend of mine wrote an excellent series of articles, they primarily address the issue of Christian Criticism and accountability, but he draws out some excellent points with respect to "Is Good, Good Enough?"; I suggest you give the entire article a read. Biblically speaking, our best is not sufficient (Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10), so our mediocre is certainly not.
There is an excellent article by Thabiti Anyabwile that approaches this issue with great clarity. The following list of reasons NOT to hold altar calls is presented in his article as quoted from Pastor Ryan Kelly of Desert Springs Church.
1. The altar call is simply and completely absent from the pages of the N.T.
2. The altar call is historically absent until the 19th century, and its use at that time (via Charles Finney) was directly based upon bad theology and a man-centered, manipulative methodology.
3. The altar call very easily confuses the physical act of “coming forward” with the spiritual act of “coming to Christ.” These two can happen simultaneously, but too often people believe that coming to Christ is going forward (and vice-versa).
4. The altar call can easily deceive people about the reality of their spiritual state and the biblical basis for assurance. The Bible never offers us assurance on the ground that we “went forward.”
5. The altar call partially replaces baptism as the means of public profession of faith.
6. The altar call can mislead us to think that salvation (or any official response to God’s Word) happens primarily on Sundays, only at the end of the service, and only “up front.”
7. The altar call can confuse people regarding “sacred” things and “sacred” places, as the name “altar call” suggests.
8. The altar call is not sensitive to our cautious and relational age where most people come to faith over a period of time and often with the interaction of a good friend.
9. The altar call is often seen as “the most important part of the service”, and this de-emphasizes the truly more important parts of corporate worship which God has prescribed (preaching, prayer, fellowship, singing).
10. God is glorified to powerfully bless the things He has prescribed (preaching, prayer, fellowship, singing), not the things we have invented. We should always be leery of adding to God’s prescriptions for His corporate worship.
Thabiti Anyabwile adds one last item to Pastor Ryan Kelly's list;
11. The “altar call” teaches the congregation to evaluate the “success” or “effectiveness” of the ministry on outward, visible actions and results.
This is an excellent summation of the dangers of the altar call. Thabiti makes an excellent point in his article as well; "I don’t think the pastor who practices an “invitation” at the end of a sermon is in sin, but he may not be acting wisely either." Which serves to return us to the issue of - is 'good' ever really good enough?
The connection between altar calls and easy believeism is in the timing and pressure. Most often - the altar call and the sinners prayer lead to a false conversion. A false conversion is bourne out of ignorance of Gods Word and is not evidence of a repentant heart. Scripture says we will be known by our fruit (Matthew 7:16, John 13:34-35), Biblically speaking, this is a 'tell' that someone has made a false confession. When a confession of Faith has been made and an individual continues in a willful lifestyle of sin, this can be an evidence of a false conversion - or at the very least a complete misunderstanding of the Gospel. How can one repent and follow God and then willfully continue in the sin that separates him from God (Romans 6:1-2)? Herein lies the evidence of a "false conversion."
If someone has no understanding of who God is and what it is that separates us from Him, there can be no real understanding of a need for a Savior (2 Thessalonians 1:3-10). This misunderstanding is a byproduct of easy believeism.
The issue of manipulation and pressure is a serious one. Coming from a background of marketing and design, I can tell you that the use of colour, light, sound, scent, texture, music, associative behavior (product placement), etc.; all of these things contribute to, and are regularly used as manipulative tactics. It is no secret that man is easily manipulated, yet God's Word calls us to live honestly and love completely (Mark 12:28-31, Micah 6:8). When we seek to manipulate and cajole people into walking an aisle and making a profession, we seek to usurp the role of the Holy Spirit (John 3:3-7, Titus 3:5, John 16:8, II Thessalonians 2:3-10). We must always remember just what our role is meant to be, before God and before the world. The Holy Spirit will do His work, we must do ours. (II Corinthians 2:14-16)
In this short three minute video, Todd Friel shares some excellent insights about altar calls, but most specifically with respect to manipulation and it's place in church.
It's a lot to consider and our heart and goal should be simply to be as clear and Gospel oriented as possible - so as to allow the world to hear and understand the Truth, in God's timing - not in our own (2 Peter 3:8-9). Generally speaking the altar call is a method to achieve a goal, accompanied often by the sinners prayer as the easiest means to an end. That is, ostensibly, to see someone come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. This is an excellent goal (and should be our ONLY motivation), but it is not our role to convict and to save, it is our role to disciple and to teach. (Matthew 28:19-20)
Ray Comfort has some excellent information about the long term effects and result of altar calls in evangelism in his book "God Has A Wonderful Plan for Your Life". The statistics are grim and should inspire us to seek to evangelize to greater effect by engaging in the work of discipleship. The following are just a few statistics taken from chapter six "The Motive and the result" (I highly recommend you read the entire book to get the comprehensive list of statistics and information);
• At a 1990 crusade in the United States, 600 “decisions for Christ” were obtained. No doubt, there was much rejoicing. However, ninety days later, follow-up workers could not find even one who was continuing in the faith. That crusade created 600 “backsliders”—or, to be more scriptural, false converts.
• In Cleveland, Ohio, an inner-city outreach brought 400 decisions. The rejoicing no doubt tapered off when follow-up workers could not find a single one of the 400 who had supposedly made a decision.
• In 1991, organizers of a Salt Lake City concert encouraged follow-up and discovered, “Less than 5 percent of those who respond to an altar call during a public crusade . . . are living a Christian life one year later.” In other words, more than 95 percent proved to be false converts.
• In 1985, a four-day crusade obtained 217 decisions. However, according to a member of the organizing committee, 92 percent fell away.
• A church in Boulder, Colorado, sent a team to Russia in 1991 and obtained 2,500 decisions. The next year, the team found only thirty continuing in their faith. That is a retention rate of 1.2 percent.
• According to Pastor Elmer Murdoch, “Chuck Colson . . . states that for every 100 people making decisions for Christ, only two may return for follow-up a few days later. George Barna says that the majority of people (51 percent minimum) making decisions leave the church in 6–8 weeks.”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ has value, it has great value. It is the single most important thing you will ever come to understand and the single most important thing you will ever communicate. It absolutely deserves your attention and a clarity of presentation; it is worth the time needed for the discipleship expected of us. God has given us the entire Bible to communicate the gospel to us, why do we feel the need to reduce it to formulas and over simplified untruth?
We must shout the gospel from our very lives. Live it always, preach it as often as possible, and disciple everyone that we come into contact with. We must plead with people to hear the gospel and to know God.
The Gospel is not complicated, mankind in our depravity (Ephesians 4:17-18, I Corinthians 2:14, Jeremiah 17:9, Ephesians 4:19, Romans 7:24, I Timothy 4:2) is complicated.
