These will not be the most refined thoughts but I think it behooves me to get some of them out of my system in whatever form, and hopefully refine them later.
I believe that God can transform a heart in a single instant. I believe that many people have been changed by the power of the Holy Spirit of Jesus within a worship service. In fact, I believe that worship services are especially fertile environments where God’s spirit works on human hearts. However, I think altar calls are often not a part of that work.
By altar call, I mean the climactic moment where the people are asked to and given the chance to make an individual, subjective response to the truth that has been presented in the service (whether by the sermon or by other means as well). As we discussed when I was on an internal review team at that church, worship is focus + response. The sermon brings the focus, and then there is the opportunity of response. Traditionally, this opportunity includes an invitation to come down to the front and pray with an elder or kneel and pray. In Baptist churches like mine growing up, it begins with “every head bowed, every eye closed” and includes a period where you can silently repeat a prayer after the pastor and then raise your hand to show him that you prayed it, after which point he assures you that your life has been changed today, and to come talk to an elder afterwards. I also include in my definition of altar call the adaptations of many new-generation evangelical churches that are softening these formulations out, just offering an open time to respond with multiple options–you can come down front and pray with an elder, or pray a free-style prayer.
Here’s the thing about altar calls: to the extent that they are overt, they are focused on conversion, and to the extent to which they are not (just “creating a space”), they are subjective and provide no guidance or protection from error.
An overt altar call is always focused on conversion, whether it be new or a “rededication” or some partial rededication of one area or issue in one’s life. The problem with this is that it leaves nothing to do for people who have already converted and devoted their lives to God. I cannot tell you the number of times I have tuned out during the climax of the worship service, saying to myself, “Believer? Check. This doesn’t apply to me.”
Even as many churches move away from such overt altar calls, perhaps sensing the awkwardness of having a gathering comprised mostly of Christians who have already performed the act that is the climax and purpose of the gathering, there are still issues with modified “space for personal response” times. The problem is that they subjectivize the response to God, legitimizing any interpretation of the truth that is presented in the sermon. They turn the whole service into something that is focused on us. It begins with something about God, and then looks at us and asks us to finish off the service by the powers of our own sincerity. The Holy Spirit is beseeched to move on the people, but there is no anchor for the Spirit in Truth. Rather the Truth (the scriptures in the sermon) are a means to the end of an experience in which the Spirit’s movement is located in the unprovable, irrefutable castle of personal conviction. The worship service thus becomes the corporate equivalent of the evangelical private “quiet time” and even the typical small group study: that which is objective truth (the Bible) is subjected to private interpretation and application in each person’s individual mind. Thus Human Reason sits as lord over the Sacred Scriptures.
The problem with this is that it leads to all sorts of misguidedness and error on the part of church members. The only way to avoid this is to guide the people objectively through response as we do through focus–to help them respond in truth as they receive truth. But how can a response be objective? It must have a physical reality, an object outside the human mind. Such an object is not available within Evangelical theology. It is, however, available within the theology of Catholicism, in the Eucharist. This objective act is both receiving and responding to God in a way that is at once both spiritual and physical. This act, and the faith associated with it, roots the faith of the believer in something outside himself and makes the act of worship as Incarnational as the Gospel it professes. The Eucharist is the proper climax of worship and the proper act around which Christians who have already received the waters of Baptism should gather. Instead of being perpetual altar-going converts, plumbing the depths of their personal sincerity for Jesus, they take of his Body and Blood and find his Real Presence before them.
Ben Taylor 