Kethuvim

For the last few years I've been questioning everything that the Church does. Personally, I feel like I should be doing this as a minister. I think that one of the reasons the Church is in such a mess is that there haven't been enough people asking the big "why?" question. But I digress. Actually, I didn't digress because I haven't made a point about anything yet (editor's note: This section should have been removed before hitting the publish button. Sorry for the inconvenience.), but whatever.

So what I've been thinking about recently is, why do churches offer an "invitation" time (some churches call this an altar call). If you've never been to church before, let me explain. This is the time, usually after the teaching, where the speaker invites people to come forward and "accept Jesus." There is then 3 or so minutes of music in which people can respond. Here's the thing, I've grown up in church my whole life, and I can honestly only remember 3 times where someone has come forward spontaneously. In every other instance, it was scripted. The people had already met with the pastor and scheduled the time they would come forward. Does this seem ridiculous to anyone else? Out of thousands of church services I have attended, I've only seen 3 spontaneous responses. That's crazy.

So why do we do it? This is a question where I can honestly say I don't have an answer. The only thing I can figure is that the modern "altar call" as we know it, must have evolved out of tent revivals. At some point along the way, someone must have said, "Let's do that this Sunday" and the rest is history. I firmly believe that we offer invitation times simply because we always have. It's another instance of doing things just because that's the way it's always been done. It's time for the Church to stop and think about these kinds of things.

Unanswered invitations make the Church and the pastor look bad. When no one comes forward, which is definitely a majority of the time, what that says to anyone visiting who isn't a follower of Jesus is this, "Our message is so revolutionary and earth-shattering, that no one responded to it." That's not to say that people don't make changes in their lives, and it's not to say that people don't sit in their seats and make a decision to do something, but that's exactly my point. Why do you have to come forward in order to decide to follow Jesus? The answer: you don't. If there are any other pastors out there reading this, take a good look at the issue and ask some of the tougher questions of "why?". You may find that there isn't a good answer.