What is an Invitation?

BLOG OWNER’S NOTE: This post was published originally on February 22, 2010.  It is being republished verbatim in response to Les Puryear’s recent blog post, “Differences Between Reformed and Southern Baptist Churches: Altar Calls vs. No Altar Calls.”

Just a little over ten years ago the Texas Baptist Standard published an interesting article regarding the altar call entitled, “Will altar call go the way of funeral-home fans?” I recall funeral-home fans vaguely, but a decade after the article, altar calls are still very much en vogue, particularly in Baptist life. Nevertheless, there were some very interesting observations and comments made within the article.

The article begins with this bombshell:

“Fewer people are walking the aisles of some of Southern Baptists’ most progressive churches. And the pastors couldn’t be happier about it. Converts no longer respond exclusively to invitations to come to an altar. Instead, they fill out reply cards and drop them in offering plates. Stop by ministers’ offices during business hours. Others visit hospitality rooms after worship services. But sooner or later, they wind up in the baptismal waters, taking their places among a river of Baptists before them.”

Remember, now, this was in the 1990s.  The dated Baptist Standard article points to such congregations as Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Lake Pointe Church in Rockwall, Texas, and Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, which were “lauded for forging ‘innovative’ methods in garnering decisions while eschewing the traditional altar call.”

Rick Warren, the popular Saddleback pastor wrote in his best-selling 1995 work, The Purpose Driven Church:

One of our weaknesses as evangelicals is that we don’t know church history.  Because of this, we begin confusing our current traditions with orthodoxy.  Many of the methods and tools we use in churches today such as hymn singing, pianos, pipe organs, altar calls, and Sunday school were once considered worldly and even heretical.  Now that these tools are widely accepted as gifts from God used to enhance worship, we have a new blacklist.

Later in the book Warren addresses a very important issue, that of distinguishing an altar call from baptism.  He writes:

“Some might ask, ‘Where do people make their public profession of faith?’  That’s what baptism is–a public statement of faith in Christ.  In some churches, we have overemphasized the altar call so much that baptism is almost anticlimactic. . . .  The altar call is actually a modern invention. . . .  They didn’t have altar calls in the New Testament churches because there were no church buildings for about the first 300 years, which means there were no aisles to walk down and no altars to come to!”

The pastor of Lake Pointe Church, Steve Stroope, was noted in the article as saying, “We haven’t had a shift in theology. It’s always been a persons decision to follow Christ, a ‘new birth’ in Christ. The question is: How do we best serve as a midwife to help that birth take place? Is a birth different if the child is born in the home or the hospital, or if the dad’s in the delivery room? No, but it’s different in terms of how the helpers participate.”

Bob Roberts, senior pastor of Northwood Church in Keller, Texas, asserted this idea has not only pragmatic implications, but theological ones.  “In the past, the invitation was designed to ‘get ‘em down the aisle. But we have come to grips with the fact God does the saving.  If we manipulate their emotions to get a decision, if they don’t know what they’re doing then it’s not conversion.”  Northwood’s pastor compared a manipulated decision to paedobaptism. “What’s the difference between hooking people emotionally and infant baptism? A conversion involves intellect and understanding, as well as heart and will.”

The article goes on to point out that the biblical method for an individual to respond to an invitation to follow Jesus Christ is through baptism. Roy Fish, renowned (and now retired) evangelism professor from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, maintained, “Some people would think lost people ought to be given an opportunity to openly confess Christ. And they would say that’s why we give invitations ­­to openly confess Him. But the New Testament confession is baptism. If a person is baptized, they meet every New Testament requirement.” The article also points out that for several generations Baptists have actually required two professions of faith – the altar call and baptism.

“Over time, the invitation has created the ‘sacrament of walking the aisle’­­ an outward sign of an inward act,” Baptist historian Bill Leonard observed. “People would refer to their conversion experience as ‘when I walked the aisle.’  Often in many Baptist churches, walking the aisle became the central conversion experience. You didn’t have to say anything. When you stepped into that aisle, people knew what you meant.”  The article showed that churches which offered alternative “invitations” and centralized their focus on baptism were actually returning to the biblical ideal.  Roy Fish claimed, “The issue is not one of being right or wrong. Every church has to determine what is the most effective way to be obedient to God’s command to make disciples. We want to be flexible where the Bible is flexible and inflexible where the Bible is inflexible.”

Keeping these points in mind, consider some comments from Dr. Steve Lemke’s article, “What is a Baptist.”  Dr. Lemke confesses:

“Although I’ve not been cheerleader for the resurgence of Calvinism in the SBC, Calvinism has indeed made valuable contributions to Southern Baptist life. It has probably offered a healthy counterbalance and a useful corrective to the somewhat Arminian tendencies in the revivalism and the church growth movement within the SBC. In particular, it has rightly reminded us we must never fall into the heresy that our actions or methods accomplish salvation. Calvinism has also reminded us that evangelism is not accomplished as the result of a magic formula from some church growth guru. No revival takes place by human means alone; it is God that gives the increase (1 Cor. 3:6).  So I want to be very clear that I am not challenging the validity of Calvinism within the Southern Baptist Convention.”

When Calvinists are set on edge about evangelism within evangelical life, particularly within the SBC, they are not bothered by the fact that evangelism is taking place.  Instead, what non-Calvinist Southern Baptists need to realize, is that Reformed Southern Baptists are concerned about biblical evangelism taking place.  In 1996 the Cambridge Declaration was drafted by many high-profile evangelical leaders, including Baptist luminaries Alistair Begg and Al Mohler.  The Declaration highlighted the solas of the Reformation in light of contemporary church life.  It stated, in regard to Sola Scriptura:

Scripture alone is the inerrant rule of the church’s life, but the evangelical church today has separated Scripture from its authoritative function. In practice, the church is guided, far too often, by the culture. Therapeutic technique, marketing strategies, and the beat of the entertainment world often have far more to say about what the church wants, how it functions and what it offers, than does the Word of God. Pastors have neglected their rightful oversight of worship, including the doctrinal content of the music. As biblical authority has been abandoned in practice, as its truths have faded from Christian consciousness, and as its doctrines have lost their saliency, the church has been increasingly emptied of its integrity, moral authority and direction.

Rather than adapting Christian faith to satisfy the felt needs of consumers, we must proclaim the law as the only measure of true righteousness and the gospel as the only announcement of saving truth. Biblical truth is indispensable to the church’s understanding, nurture and discipline.

Scripture must take us beyond our perceived needs to our real needs and liberate us from seeing ourselves through the seductive images, cliche’s, promises. and priorities of mass culture. It is only in the light of God’s truth that we understand ourselves aright and see God’s provision for our need. The Bible, therefore, must be taught and preached in the church. Sermons must be expositions of the Bible and its teachings, not expressions of the preachers opinions or the ideas of the age. We must settle for nothing less than what God has given.

In the second thesis, that related to Solus Christus, the signatories of the Declaration made it plain:

We reaffirm that our salvation is accomplished by the mediatorial work of the historical Christ alone. His sinless life and substitutionary atonement alone are sufficient for our justification and reconciliation to the Father.

We deny that the gospel is preached if Christ’s substitutionary work is not declared and faith in Christ and his work is not solicited.

Note what the Reformational believe regarding the gospel – that if Christ’s substitutionary work is not declared and faith in Christ and His work is not solicited, then the gospel is not preached.  Calvinists believe in evangelism, but as biblicists they want nothing to do with “therapeutic technique, marketing strategies, and the beat of the entertainment world.”  We believe the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16).  We believe, generally, that altar calls may be used carefully but all too often they are employed in a manner which is manipulative and blurs the gospel.  That is why many Calvinist pastors shy away from the altar call.  It is not because they do not believe in the invitation.  They believe in the invitation and believe it must be issued every time the gospel is preached.  What they shy away from is employing a method which they view as historically novel, evangelistically ineffective and theologically defective.  Calvinists believe the public profession of faith, from a biblical perspective, is not the altar call, but baptism. This is why they emphasize baptism.

If non-Calvinists are given a green light in regard to using methods other than the altar call, yet are still viewed as being highly evangelistic, then why do some within SBC life attack Calvinists as anti-evangelistic when they attempt to do the same?  Does Calvinism affect the invitation?  Yes, by distinguishing it from the altar call, emphasizing the necessity of divine power in the conversion of a soul, and maintaining baptism as the only biblical public profession of faith.