In the push to execute Sunday morning services, it is easy to forget the basics: churches grow when people receive Christ, and people receive Christ when they’re invited to receive Christ. Read the story of a church that has mastered the basics.
Recently, I was engaged by a small, rural church in one of the poorest counties in their state. The pastor called me because they were experiencing a rare problem for a church in the 21st century. They were growing so fast that they couldn't keep up with all the new people coming in.
They have 10,000 square feet of worship and education space on the main street in their town. The church renovated an old used car lot for parking. They bought more chairs. They launched three services on Sunday. Still, they could not keep up. They were out of parking spaces and out of seats. They hoped I could help them navigate the challenges they were facing because of their rapid growth. I had to see this.
One Sunday, I showed up. I didn’t tell anyone I was coming. I had only met the pastor, so he was the only one who knew what I looked like. The worship was loud, sometimes unorganized, sometimes spontaneous. The pastor preached a decent message on “becoming a new creation in Christ.” The message was good yet, in my (“professional”) opinion, a little simplistic. And then…
The pastor gave a call to receive Christ. At first, no one answered the call. So, the pastor just stood there in silence. It was beginning to get awkward when a man in the back stood up and walked forward to the altar. We’ll call him “John.”
John was young, a little unkept and seemed kind of “rough.” He knelt. The pastor laid hands on him, and they both prayed a “sinner’s prayer.” Then, some folks took the cover off a horse trough filled with water. This young fellow was about to get baptized!
As John was getting into the “baptismal,” he spoke to the pastor. The pastor’s microphone picked up the man’s words and broadcast those words to everyone in the worship center that day. I will never forget that moment or the young man’s words as long as I live: “Be careful not to get my ankle-monitor wet.”
The following Tuesday, I attended a worship planning meeting at the church. During the meeting I said very little and just listened.
First, they did a debrief of the past Sunday worship. Looked at some numbers. Talked about sound system mixing that sounded “awful” online. Discussed how they had lost a sound technician and the training needed by the new guy.
They covered most aspects of their service, except one: the altar call. I started asking questions. What I learned was, for this church, people answering the call of Christ and getting baptized is a regular occurrence.
Then one woman said, “Pastor rarely comes to these planning meetings. He really leaves it up to us.”
“Everything up to you guys?” I asked.
“Everything but the altar call,” she said. Then she added with a smile. “Pastor insists on an altar call every week and God help the person who screws up the altar call.”
For this church, the worst thing that could happen on a Sunday morning was not to have an altar call.
I asked about John. They already had a file on him. Someone had already been to his home. I learned that no one knew him previously. He had come alone on Sunday for the first time. He was facing years in prison. In his desperation, he told them he “just started driving” that Sunday morning. He said he could not explain why he turned into the parking lot.
This is my takeaway from this encounter: God did not command John to go to church. God commanded the church to go to John.
For the last twenty-five years, I have helped churches manage their operations, communications, outreach, and finances. After meeting this team, I reflected on the hundreds of churches with which I’d associated. I tried to think of any church that would have had a live altar call on that Sunday morning. I could think of only two. One was a large Baptist church in Florida that had an altar call every Sunday and one was a large Pentecostal church in Ohio that routinely had multiple altar calls each month, just not weekly. Two churches.
For years, I ran a not-for-profit ministry that provided virtual administrative, financial, and communication services for hundreds of churches. In all those years, I have not heard a single pastor or staff member passionately advocating for an altar call during service or any other time. Not one. On the other hand, I have heard endless reasons not to. Below are some common ones:
- Nobody gets “saved” because they “prayed a little prayer.”
- That might have worked for Billy Graham in a stadium, but it does not work in a modern “church context.”
- Nobody responds to that kind of stuff anymore.
- We don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable.
- Responses to altar calls never last.
- Our church is different.
This type of thinking has permeated the American Church. When Jesus gave the Church the Great Commission he said:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:16-20.
I wonder how many Christians see this verse of Scripture as written to them personally.
As leaders, it is our duty to help congregation members understand that Christianity is the only major religion on earth with an apostolic requirement of all believers. Christians are called to grow the Church by assimilating the hearts and minds of non-adherents. All other major world religions either have no incumbency to grow the faith (Hinduism and Buddhism) or are commanded to go forth and multiply (Judaism and Islam).
And we can help God’s people understand that Jesus was talking about all of us, not just the pastor. A word search shows that when Jesus said, “Therefore go,” He was commanding. In this context, the word “go” is an imperative verb used to give a command, make a request, or offer advice. It's often found at the beginning of a sentence and doesn't require a subject because it's implied to be “you.” Essentially, it tells someone to do something. The definition of the word “go” is “to move on a course or with purpose.” In other words, do something. To not “go,” to do nothing, is to be disobedient to Christ’s command.
What would have happened to John if he walked through the doors of one of the 8 other churches on that road in that town? Would John have been invited to the table?
That church knows what happened to John. I don’t. What I am confident of is that had John randomly gone to almost any other church anywhere in the US that Sunday morning, the odds of someone asking if he would like to receive the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ are slim to none. As leaders, we have to ask ourselves if this might be why God “chose” this church to grow.
Don Corder has had more than 40 years of success in executive leadership, working with for-profit, not-for-profit, Christian ministries and churches as a CEO, COO and Executive Pastor. Don’s passion is for poor, hungry, and undiscipled people. He has dedicated his life to growing God’s Kingdom on earth by helping churches and faith-based charities identify their calling, cast clear vision, and then help them create a plan to mobilize and revitalize a congregation to accomplish the same.
In 2002, Don left industry to become the COO of a church with 10,000 members and a $45 million budget. In 2013, He founded a not-for-profit ministry providing virtual administrative services (Treasury, Accounting, Marketing, Communication, Fundraising) for hundreds churches and faith-based charities. Don is the Author of the best-selling books Minding His Business and Connect.
