The Case Against the Invitation/Altar Call

Are we sure it's Biblical?

Bobby Ross Jr. at The Christian Chronicle had an interesting piece recently in which he surveyed several ministers about whether they practice the end-of-sermon invitation (known as the altar call in other circles). I’m never shy about my criticisms of the Chronicle, so I don’t mind giving them credit when I think they deserve it as they do here. I’m glad he opened up the discussion.

I’ve long held the view that the invitation is unnecessary and even counter-productive. If you’ve heard me preach you’ve probably noticed I don’t always give the plan of salvation, and discourage people from walking down the aisle and instead encourage them to seek out me, an elder, or another minister. Think Deeper Podcast regulars have also heard Joe and I rail against the invitation and make some of the case I’m going to make here.

But both from podcast listeners and from folks in the pews we’ve received a number of questions about it and even outright challenges as to why we left any potential converts uneducated on the plan of salvation. Since Brother Ross has brought the question to the online brotherhood’s attention, it seems now is as good a time as any to lay out why I think we should consider dropping the practice.

The case against the necessity of the invitation

1. It is not found in Scripture

We are people of the Book who strive to do everything by the authority of Scripture… except for in this practice. Find me a sermon in the Bible that ends with a call for people to come forward to the speaker. Sermon on the Mount and Sermon on the Plain—no invitation. Acts 17—no invitation. Many consider Hebrews to be a transcript of a sermon—no invitation.

“Ah, but what about Acts 2!” the first response always comes. The Chronicle article even mentioned it twice. First, there is no invitation in Acts 2. Peter finished what he had to say, and people asked him what they should do about it. He didn’t call them to do anything—they asked. If somebody comes up to the preacher after church and asks, he should tell them. Acts 2:38 came after 2:37, not the other way around.

Second, Acts 2 was not a worship service of the gathered saints. (And if you want to claim it was, it also sets a precedent for 3 minute sermons that we haven’t implemented in like manner.) Saying we have to give an invitation every Sunday because of what Peter did in preaching to a throng of the unsaved does not follow. (While we’re at it, the same goes for the Ethiopian Eunuch and the Philippian Jailer, who also were not attending a worship service and also asked first.)

2. It is ahistorical

Again, going truly “back to the Bible” would not lead anyone to thinking the church has to give the plan of salvation in every sermon. And history bears this out, that up until American revivalism, nobody thought the preacher had to do it.

The Chronicle article does a nice job of referencing the Restoration’s history of the practice and offered quotes as to why our forebears deemed it distinct from the denominational practices around them. However, the major difference isn’t in offering an invitation, only in what we tell people to do when they come forward.

The practice of calling people forward after the sermon is still taken straight from the denominational world, and even for them it was a novel invention.

In Revival and Revivalism, Iain H. Murray documents the practice’s origins as beginning in the late 1700s within the Church of England in America and being adopted by Methodists shortly thereafter.

The initial justification for the new practice was that by bringing individuals to identify themselves publicly it was possible for them to be prayed with and to be given instruction. Nobody, at first, claimed to regard it as a means of conversion.[1]

Charles Finney and his emotionally manipulative Anxious Seat put the practice into the mainstream, and it’s still almost universally practiced here today. This idea that we have to do it or we’re failing God AND the lost was foreign to 1700 years of Christians.

3. We don’t need it to save the lost

R.L. Dabney argued that the invitation reaches two kinds of people. First, there are those who are emotionally stirred up but not ready and thus are hurt by thinking they’ve been saved without actually getting it. And second, there are those who are genuine seekers who will stick around long enough to find out [2].

The invitation’s staunchest defenders seem to genuinely believe that the church is shrinking in part because the invitation isn’t given the prominent position it deserves. For it to be effective, we would have to have outsiders there in the first place, something that’s not always the case.

And if they are, the implication is that if we don’t preach the full plan of salvation and “come forward as we stand and sing” every week, that some seekers will wake up in hell saying, “I really wanted to be a Christian, but the one week I went to church, nobody told me what to do!” Is our faith in Christ’s promise that small (Matthew 7:8)?

4. Its results are dubious at best

I believe Dabney is correct in his assessment that on the whole, it’s not converting anyone who didn’t want to be converted anyway, and it is giving a false conversion to others. This makes it a net loss.

That being the case, there’s good reason to not baptize someone immediately after the sermon. If they were ready coming in that morning, there’s no reason for them to wait through the Bible class and the whole worship service. If they hopped up and walked down the aisle in the spur of the moment, it would probably be wise to study with them to make sure they know what they’re getting into (as my fellow Dicksonite Chris McCurley pointed out in the Chronicle piece). In any case, it’s not really the best time for it.

But that’s for the ones who do come forward. Outside of places where it is heavily urged by preachers who perform the old Finney-ite tactics of stopping the song and trying to goad a response, most churches hardly ever see someone respond to the call to be baptized. As

Weylan Deaver

pointed out in a piece he shared with me, this can become highly discouraging for a church. Years into the discouragement, everybody realizes we’re almost always only doing it for the sake of checking the box that says we did it.

What does it hurt, though?

Somebody might grant all of these arguments but still say we should leave it as it is. It can’t ever hurt, right? I disagree.

Aside from the false hope it can give and the shallow converts it can create, I think the practice reveals one of the biggest misconceptions about the church today.

Sunday morning isn’t about evangelism

This point has long been a staple of my writing here (see Worship Isn’t for Visitors and Evangelism Isn’t Everything). In many cases, the church is struggling to evangelize and so we turn everything the church does into evangelism. Sunday morning is about evangelism, so sermons are watered down to the outsider’s level and a heavy push for conversion is made. Benevolence is about evangelism, so every generous act has an evangelistic hook in it. Church leadership is about evangelism, so we run every decision through how we think the lost will respond.

Evangelism is critically important. But it’s not the only thing we do. We can do some things that don’t have an outward focus.

No, scratch that.

We should do some things that don’t have an outward focus.

Some things are only for the family—most of all the Sunday gathering at our Lord’s table. Going through the entire thing only to end by making it about non-Christians just tells the family that they don’t matter as much.

Outsiders may come and observe, but it’s not for them. They need to know that we enjoy blessings that are exclusive to God’s family. Then, they need to know that they are welcome to have those same blessings as soon as they become Christians, and not a minute sooner.

And who knows, maybe making our members feel like they have something valuable that others are missing out on might make us all more evangelistic people.

A caution to traditionalism

Some of the more staunch defenses for the invitation toe the line of turning the traditions of man into the commandments of God. We have to realize, it is strictly that—a tradition. It’s a relatively recent tradition, one unattested by Scripture, and one that misunderstands what we’re trying to do as the church.

As we continue to faithfully cut the ham in half just like grandma did, as the old illustration goes, maybe it’s time to realize something should change. It’s not that we have a bigger pan now—it’s that the ham never needed to be cut in the first place.

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An addendum: what about coming up front for prayers?

All the insistence on the invitation is pointed at its evangelistic aims, but it is also typically offered to Christians who need prayers. In this day and age, people would rather text than call—do we really think those same people want to confess a sin in front of hundreds of people?

And when they do, whose responsibility did it become? We’re better off having them talk to their elders or a mature brother or sister privately. If a public confession is needed, we can make time for that in a way that fits more naturally than post sermon.

[1] - Iain H. Murray, Revival and Revivalism, Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1994. p.185-6.

[2] Murray, p.367.