“Salvation” without comprehension

Without outlining the salvation message, the pastor says, “raise your hand to come to Jesus right now and join our happy community.” The wording itself in that invitation is okay. Yet there is no more spiritual depth to it than asking for volunteers to clean the church – if the gospel has not been explained properly.

The raising of the hand becomes mundane – like a kid in class asking to go to the bathroom - if repentance has not been spelled out. Verses such as: “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me,” (Luke 9:23) should be explained. There is a cost in following Jesus, and anyone deciding to follow Him has to understand that.

People must realize what they are responding to. As well as repentance, they must hear about sin, hell, the blood, the cross, baptism, heaven. They must know that committing to Jesus is even more serious than a bride or groom saying “I do.”

If it isn’t like that, the result is people who think they are “born again” but really are not. They can be responding in the emotion of the moment – when nothing is heard but a choir softly singing, and the atmosphere is electric. That’s fine if the emotion is combined with proper understanding of what they are doing.

The Bible defines that understanding: “That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

In his crusades, Billy Graham used a huge choir soon after asking for a response – but he always made the gospel clear first! Furthermore, he stressed it was a commitment.

A person does not become a mature Christian overnight. It is an ongoing, learning process. Nevertheless if the understanding is not there at the beginning, then it's likely the commitment is not there either.

With that kind of start, such Christians will never understand this paraphrase of John F. Kennedy’s famous statement: ask not what God can do for you, but rather, what you can do for God.

The result of flippant come-to-Jesus invitations is surely church members who hear nothing and know nothing of persecution, difficult times, and testing by God. They will probably attend simply for the good times and happy, feel-good social interaction.

If the pastor is not going to spell out the gospel before the appeal, he should have a team of counsellors ready afterward who will do it. He might say: “If you feel God speaking to you tonight, and you don’t know Jesus as Saviour, talk to one of our counsellors after the meeting.”

The Lord surely wants those saved to be people of guts, commitment. The Apostle Paul is an example. Such people will take risks for God. They will understand what it cost Jesus to save them, and are prepared to make sacrifices in seeing His will be done.

They will be full of the Holy Spirit; they will tell the gospel with boldness; they will be out on Main St handing out tracts.

Today there are too few doing that, and it is surely a result of insufficient thought being applied before shallow invitations are made.