At the end of every TV program, Joel Osteen gives his viewers an opportunity to ‘say’ a prayer and ‘accept’ Christ as savior. Some will see this as a good thing, but there is no call to repentance or obedience—nor a call to discipleship. But to be fair, Joel is not alone in this “just say a prayer” thing.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference in how we evangelize today versus the way Jesus did. You see, the real danger is in people thinking they are born again because they said a prayer. According to Christian pollster George Barna less than 10% of American Evangelicals live their lives like Biblical Christians. But over 60% have said some sort of "salvation prayer" and think they are saved because of it. Does that mean the other 50% think they are saved but are not?
Even Billy Graham doubted that everyone who said a "salvation prayer" was saved: “I don't believe any man can come to Christ unless the Holy Spirit has prepared his heart. And I don't believe any man can come to Christ unless God draws him. My job is to proclaim the message. It's the Holy Spirit's job to do the work.” D. L. Moody expressed it well: "Make disciples, not decisions."
Jesus said: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; the decisive issue is whether they obey my Father in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21 NIV, NLT) And even more pointedly, “He who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” (Mat 10:38).
Greg,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that the public call to repentance is a rare event in many church settings these days, no matter how large the venue or how small. The term, "making a decision for Christ" seems to dilute the entire process necessary to integrate someone into the family of God; it is as if the exchange of life is initiated by the will of man, not the reverse. It also puts man in the driver's seat from the very beginning in a vehicle designed to respond to only One Driver. Catastrophe awaits.
At the same time the question arises about how much effort and time are we members of God's family willing to invest in the newly born-again, regardless of what invitation they responded to? The environment of our culture of privacy and convenience is not readily conducive to caring for newborns very well. But they need an enormous amount of nurturing and modeling and encouraging as they set out to live the exchanged life! How prepared are we to accomodate their needs for sustenance?
Stan
You bring up a very good point about the "after birth!" Billy Graham said most of the people who made 'decisions for Christ' were not born again until they were followed up by a mature believer. Thus, he never did a crusade without the follow up.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the point is that our churches have become too large to effectively carry out the duty to make disciples. When that is the case, it's time to go back to the directions (in Acts and Paul's pastoral letters) to find out how to 'do' church in the 21st century.