I feel like I am about to talk to you about 8 track tapes, those boxy clunky pieces of plastic that held music inside and you would pop them into your 8 track player in your car or home stereo.
Like the 8 track tape, the altar call feel like an bygone method of people coming to Christ. Unlike the 8 track tape, which evolved from records, evolved to cassette tapes which evolved to cd and eventually digital (which is a better product than an 8 track in every way, I’m not sure there is a “better” when it comes to calling people to Christ.
Has the altar call evolved? If so, what is the new altar people are called to? Are there more people coming to Christ through podcasts? Or social media? If they are, I never hear about it and I am in these spaces.
Altar calls were a big thing growing up in the 80’s and 90’s.
I remember being invited to the altar at camp to receive Christ. I knelt down and my counselors prayed for me.
I remember being invited to the altar in youth where youth leaders prayed for me.
I remember being invited to the front to pray and received my calling to ministry.
I miss altar calls and I don’t miss altar calls.
This past Sunday, one of our staff gave a call the altar and no one came to the front, it’s not unusual for that to happen because we have an older, smaller church. It’s also not unusual for pastor, myself included, to surmise that we may not have done a ver good job of communicating what the altar was for or why people need it.
That’s that’s one of the downsides of altar calls. If they are full we think we did great and if they are empty we think we did terrible.
This is where I don’t care for altar calls
I’ve given and seen hundreds of altar calls over 35 years and if I’ve learned anything is to never trust your eyes. Altar calls are not proof of discipleship and they are not proof that preachers are anointed.
I’ve seen many students, and adults, myself included, who have come to an altar, wept bitterly and went off and lived like hell. You can’t trust your eyes or even an experience teens might have at an altar because emotions are misleading.
I’ve preached terribly and people still came to the altar no thanks to me
The altar is not a litmus test of whether God is at work in your church or not because if that’s the case, God, like Elvis, has left many of the buildings.
I am torn about altar calls because, in this regard, yes the altar call can be and has been abused, but aren’t people being manipulated in every other form where there is a call to Christ regardless if the medium is digital or in real life?
I haven’t given a traditional, come to the altar call, in a youth setting, for at least 3 years which is the amount of time I have been part time youth pastor at my current church.
Because we have a small youth group my best way to create space for students to have time with God, which is one of the reasons you want to have an altar call in the first place, are prayer stations.
Like an altar call you stand or sit at a certain spot and reflect. Prayer stations, like the one I’ve just written for Easter called The 3 Gardens, are meant to connect us with God, in prayer, in quiet reflection allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to them, to reach them in a way I cannot.
This is why I love the altar call
Elton Trueblood was a noted 20th-century American Quaker author and theologian, former chaplain both to Harvard and Stanford universities said,
“Our main mission field today, so far as America is concerned, is within the church membership itself.”
How much more do we need the altar, in some fashion, today?
I fell like I am 100% trying to reach my own students for Christ. Forget the community, because even if I could reach the community, neither the youth group or the church are structured to welcome them in or disciple them.
Say what you want to about the altar, at least it was common ground, where the old and the young could meet together, pray together, cry together and experience God together.
Altar Calls aren’t proof of anything, except that I still think we need them.