So since moving south, I’ve been church shopping. This means going to a whole lot of different churches, and checking out what they do, how much free stuff they give to new people (one church gave me chocolate, a definite plus!), how welcoming the people are, what the service is like, etc… I have a bit of an informal points system going (which isn’t an objective measure, it’s a measure of how good the church is for me - I appreciate that a low scoring church for me might be a high scoring church for others)
One church I went to was a bit outside of my comfort zone. The first thing they lost points for was for the offering, where they read one of those passages designed to manipulate people into giving more money, and pretty much said that if you want to prosper, you should give to the church. It all sounded too much like the prosperity doctrine: God wants you to have lots of money, and will help you achieve it, just so long as you give us a little money. I don’t like it, because it’s manipulating people, and because I don’t think God is about money, he’s much more interested in more important things. Anyway.
They lost some other points for being too pentecostal for me, gained some points because the guy who sat next to me was pretty friendly, and then they had an altar call, which meant I started to mentally subtract points for it. But then I got thinking, maybe an altar call, if properly done, isn’t a bad thing?
One of the problems with church these days is that church can turn into a spectator sport. There are the people up the front, and the people in the seats. The people up front do stuff, and the people in the seats don’t. I don’t think that’s good. In church, everyone ought to be part of the community, and so everyone should be part of the service. There should be no “audience”. There is a lack of participation. And an altar call is one thing that creates participation. It breaks down the divide between audience and performers, and gives people an opportunity to respond in a meaningful way.
So I’m thinking, while altar calls may often be manipulative, and may make you wince, I think there is a place for them in church. We probably need to think about them, and make sure they’re not manipulative - because forced participation is not genuine participation - but I’m thinking that they are a good thing.
So what do you think? How should an altar call be done? How can we give people the option of genuinely participating? What other things can be done to give other opportunities to participate in church?
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April 20, 2009 at 10:26 am
KT
I visited Ilam yesterday, and here’s a couple of things they do:
For the notices, instead of having all the ‘important’ people reel off a bunch of information in a scripted manner, as they do at my church, someone just got up the front and asked if anyone had any notices, and a few people did. Including things like “come for lunch at my place after if you want”.
They have ‘bar stool’ - a segment where people can come and talk about things that are going on for them, or whatever, then at the end somebody prays about whatever was raised. I guess one might worry that this kind of thing would get usurped by the people who like to talk about themselves a lot, but it seems to work for Ilam, and people have a good sense about which things are worth taking up everyone’s time over (hm, that maybe sounds a bit callous, but hopefully you know what I mean).
After the sermon, the pastor said “Ok, that’s what I think; what do you guys think?” then gave the congregation the chance to respond with any further thoughts, queries or scruples about what he’d said, and some interesting issues were raised. Again, it didn’t turn into a free-for-all; everyone seemed to be sensitive to the fact that this wasn’t the occasion for getting on their own bandwagon, and I guess they have small groups for discussing things more in-depth. But I thought it was a really good way of showing some respect for the congregation and making it a communal discussion rather than just a performance.
Obviously these things would be more difficult in a larger church. There would have been maybe 80-100 people in the room.