There are a lot of things I’ve struggled with in ministry over the years. And sometimes I’ll have a problem with something that’s done in a worship service and then over time come to embrace it for one reason or another. Altar Calls are one of those things.
We’re at Beach Retreat right now and usually on trips like this the speaker will end their last session right before Communion with the “dedicate your life to the Lord and raise your hand and repeat this prayer after me” kind of deals. A former co-worker of mine described his distaste for this sort of thing by saying that though he understood the “necessity” of formally giving people that chance, that Altar Calls were just too easy. You’re on a spiritual and emotional high and separated from “real life,” and there are other people around you putting up their hands and you just sort of do what you’re supposed to, and well-meaning as you are during that mountaintop experience, it’s all the time afterward that counts, and those are the moments where it’s a lot harder to remain dedicated to God.
That was my feeling for a long time too. Partially because my friend vocalized this so well, and probably also due to my traditional worship background where hand raising was frowned upon. If you hadn’t picked up on the tone of this post yet though, my attitude has changed over time, and even drastically tonight.
Between our weekend speaker and our musical guests tonight, there were really two Altar Calls woven into today’s session. And that’s what’s so cool. Both that they were woven into what was going on otherwise, and that they happened on the first night. At the beginning of what is going on here.
It made me think of a lesson I did a couple weeks ago with our grout about staying connected to God and realizing that sin is the very stuff that gets in the way of that relationship. How we have to just throw away the junk to be able to get down to worship, and to get down to just being in right relationship with our Creator. So many times people get up from that Altar Call just varying their eyes out, because we spend a lot of that prayer admitting to and getting over the bad stuff in our lives so we can accept the good and the forgiveness and the Grace of God. So here we were the first night doing just that, but not looking at going home tomorrow, but heading into a day of worship. A weekend continuing to plug in with God.
Does it make it any less easy to say “yes” during an Altar Call? No. Does that mean they’re inherently flawed? No. We are. It’s easy to say you commit on a short term mission. At New Year’s. When people are looking on. When the problem is right in front of you. When it’s popular. When the pressure’s on. Timing is not the only thing wrong with a typical Altar Call. But even changing that one aspect of it makes me see the value of it. I can say now that Altar Calls are necessary without being so grudging.
