Evangelist Willy Loman
by Motte Brown on 05/14/2007 at 3:06 PM
Joe Carter of The Evangelical Outpost has a top ten list of "fixtures of evangelism" that he feels are harmful to the Gospel. His main contention is that these tips and techniques are meant to create check-box converts instead of true disciples. Included in the list are "The Altar Call," "Protestant Prayers," "Chick Tracts," and my personal favorite, "The Sinners Prayer." Here's a excerpt:
The gates of hell have a special entrance reserved for people who thought that they had a ticket into heaven because someone told them all they needed to do was recite the "sinner's prayer." I've searched through the entire New Testament and can't find an example of anyone who was "saved" after reciting such a prayer. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that such prayer is worthless or that it can't be used by the Holy Spirit. But salvation is not obtained by reciting a magical incantation as many, many, "Christians" will discover after it's far, far, too late.
Joe concedes that these fixtures may be more counterproductive than pernicious. Though he does say this type of "close the deal" mentality turned him into "a cross between Billy Graham and Willy Loman" by the time he was eight. Not pernicious, but very funny.
What I found interesting is that usually when one goes about criticizing a certain style of evangelism, they often give the qualification, "However, the Lord can use anything. So God bless them." Not so with Joe. I believe he wants to convince us that convincing is the job of the Holy Spirit, not the evangelist.
1. Sam said the following at 4:32 PM on May 14:
I can't tell you what happened in the moment that I accepted Christ. Mostly because I can't really remember it. I was at a concert (a non-christian one) and when a particular Christian song was performed, at the beginning I was a skeptical cynic on all things having to do with God and when it was over I was a believer. I'd never experienced anything like that before and I've only experienced it a few times since. When the Holy Spirit decides to move in a powerful way, nothing stands in His way. I've never prayed the sinner's prayer even though I do profess - sometimes quite loudly- that Jesus is my Lord and Savior. The sinner's prayer is quite lovely, but there is some follow up that must happen after an intellectual acceptance that Jesus is the Messiah. Many, many evangelists stop at the sinner's prayer and never move forward. I think Joe Carter is on to something!
2. Dan said the following at 6:23 PM on May 14:
While I don't agree with this guy, he does raise some interesting points. I believe whole heartily in the power of alter calls and of the sinners prayer, however God doesn't look at the action, but He looks at the heart behind it. I wonder how many people have said "the prayer" and not made a heart comitment to the Lord. Deitrich Bonhoffer famously said that the biggest enemy of the church is cheap grace. This is because if we have churches full of people who haven't made that heartfelt comitment, and died to themselves and followed Christ, then a whole lot of the world ends up in our churches. Sounds familiar!
I believe that churches have not be quite so "seeker friendly" in the message it preaches ie. if you become a christian you will have a better life. By worldly standards if we are truely living for Christ then often times it isn't a better life. However people need to know how much they actually need God and His transforming power, that's when breakthrough happens and we see the amazing miracles and people coming to wholeness in Christ.
3. Leah said the following at 6:31 PM on May 14:
...what the? That made me so confused. Someone please explain to me what exactly is wrong with praying to become a Christian. Because that's what you're condeming here. I totally support the fact that we need to support converts beyond the initial prayer, but to say The gates of hell have a special entrance reserved for people who thought that they had a ticket into heaven because someone told them all they needed to do was recite the "sinner's prayer." is ridiculous.
I mean, last I checked, becoming a Christian meant confessing our sins to God, repenting of them, and submitting our lives to Jesus. The "sinners prayer" as you call it fulfills the first part. Certainly, it needs to go beyond that and into the constant repenting of our sins and submission to Jesus, but to carry on like saying the sinners prayer won't get you anywhere is pure ridiculousness.
And this has nothing to do with whether it's the evangelist or the Holy Spirit doing the convincing.
4. Peter Wells said the following at 8:04 PM on May 14:
Joe Carter's post contains nearly every reason why I left the Church in my teens. He's simply reposting what people who are searching for genuine truth have known for years.
And Leah? I think the point Joe is making is that it's all well and good to confess your sin, but you a) have to actually mean it and b) do something about it as well. The 'sinners prayer' is effective to neither of those ends.
5. Sam said the following at 8:50 PM on May 14:
@Leah,
Consider carefully the words you quoted, and then what you yourself say is required. The objection is to the idea that *all* one needs to do is *recite* the sinners prayer.
Thus, he is absolutely correct. Merely reciting a prayer - paying lip service to God - does not give you a ticket into heaven. All the prayers in the world will not do that; it is not about simply giving voice to words.
6. Leah said the following at 10:27 PM on May 14:
Well it's no good if you "mean it" and don't do it. I mean, come judgment day, it's not going to be good enough in God's books if we sit there and say "Oh, I meant to say sorry, I meant to repent of my sin". No, you actually have to do it, you have to actually say sorry and repent of your sin. Of course simply "saying a prayer" without any meaning is pointless, but that's no grounds to say 'saying the prayer is pointless'. An action is never enough on its own. Does this mean we don't do it?? If that's what a church thinks, I'd want nothing to do with that church... Taking communion without an understanding of what it means is pointless. Does this mean we don't administer communion??
7. Leah said the following at 10:43 PM on May 14:
Sam and Peter- Ok, well take it back to what Motte said, that "Joe Carter... has a top ten list of "fixtures of evangelism" that he feels are harmful to the Gospel... (including) my personal favorite, "The Sinners Prayer.""
"The Sinner's Prayer" is not, and should not be treated as, a 'fixture' that is harmful to the Gospel. It is only when it is used badly that it is.
8. Joseph said the following at 12:01 AM on May 15:
Although his tact was rather straightforward for such an important and sacred aspect of Christianity on much of his points I thought he was right on.
Making converts verses disicples, I couldn't agree more. I see effective ministries like Way of the Master but wonder how many disicples have been made instead of people saying a prayer. Looking at the Gospels, Christ's growing of disicples all too often seems to be an overlooked aspect of Christianity.
I think the Sinner's Prayer has much of it's roots in Romans 10, under the "confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord", however, I have encountered many a sermon and pastors that have preached about accepting Christ as your Savior, not Lord.
#3 is very similar to points 1&2, the insincerity of some evangelicals to share the gospel before we have earned the person's attention to truly hear it. Are there examples of Christ going up to random people and showing them his way? Yes, at the same time I think his divine knowledge of their hearts added to his ability to show them what they needed at the right time.
I am not sure that I fully agree with Tribulationism, does it get more focus than the Gospels with such examples as the Left Behind series, perhaps. I think that is because there is so much speculation on the future and many people have heard the Gospel. Whether they understand it is a different story. Looking to the future events I think can open people's minds to what happened in the past (the Gospel) and how the big picture matters.
I have had awkward moments asking for a testimony before, usually it tends to be on a volunteer application or some faith based organization. Are we actively using our daily lives as the testament to Christ like we ought to?
The Alter Call ranks right up there with the sinner's prayer, I explain deeper about my reservations of alter calls in my Slovakia blog.
Selling Christ, I completely agree with comparing modern evangelism to Amway. Is that ever how the Gospel was shared in the New Testament? Why then are so many ministries approaching the Gospel in such a way?
#8, hmmm, should prayers come from the heart, yes. Do they always have to be orginal to be authentic, I don't think so. How many of us have quoted something from a Christian writer/apologist? Does that make those words any less meaningful?
#9 seems so related to 1,2,3,6,7 not much need to dive into it.
I wouldn't go as far to say tracts are tools of the devil. I am not a fan of using them, I would prefer such important things as the Gospel to be shared by Christians and not a colorful piece of paper that might have cost a penny, in my mind it cheapens the Gospel. On the other side of things for those not seasoned with 1 Peter 3:15-16, tracts are helpful to get to the point.
9. Bethany said the following at 1:16 AM on May 15:
I think the most important point that Carter is making is that we need to make sure that what we are telling people actually lines up with Scripture. We don't want to be telling people, "Just pray this prayer and you'll be saved" if that's not how we're saved.
And, I agree completely that it is up to the Holy Spirit to convict a person's heart and not an evangelist. That's not to say that God won't use us as part of the process but I believe that it is the Holy Spirit who really "seals the deal".
10. Jacob said the following at 6:28 AM on May 15:
Convincing IS the job of the Holy Spirit.
About alter calls....they're actually a relatively new invention by the church in America. It comes out of the 19th century revivalism. You won't find people "coming forward" in the New Testament or in any accounts up until Charles Phinney and the 19th Cent. An excellent book on this and other changes that occurred is Nathan Hatch's "The Democritization of American Christianity." Mark Noll's "A History of Christianity in America and Canada" is a good resource as well.
11. Laura said the following at 7:54 AM on May 15:
Whoa, whoa... "whether it's the evangelist or the Holy Spirit doing the convincing"? Please, read Romans 8:26, 1 Corinthians 2:4 -- in fact, all of 1 Corinthians 2. "Not by human wisdom, but by the Holy Spirit" seems pretty clear to me. No human being can talk someone into salvation, and no human being can pray their way into salvation, because salvation is by grace, not works (actions). Prayer and preaching are actions -- ones which the Lord often uses to accomplish salvation. But the Holy Spirit draws hearts, not the evangelist.
That's why this "sinner's prayer" thing can be dangerous. Not because prayer is bad, nor because the Lord can't or won't use it to save a person, but because it can lead people to think that, because they repeated some words at a revival one time, their situation with the Lord is settled. It's cheap grace. It's "go ye therefore into all the world and get decisions of all people," instead of "make disciples." It's making prayer, a precious time of fellowship between the Lord and His saints on earth, into a magic formula to protect the participant from Hell.
12. Insurance Girl said the following at 8:11 AM on May 15:
Before I became a Christian just recently, I posted the Sinner's Prayer to my background on my work computer. It was more of a daily reminder that something was missing. Honestly, I did not know what it meant to be a "Christian" and by having that Prayer up there, it was convicting to me. So, long story short- It doesnt matter how we go about "spreading the word" God has a plan, I'm just glad I am apart of it.
13. Becky F. said the following at 9:44 AM on May 15:
I can see Carter's point: that most of the tactics used for evangelism by the Church (mostly reformed churches) today are going to turn out to be fads. Christianity has been around for 2,000 years, and these methods have been in place for maybe 100-200 years.
Why is the Catholic church still the largest Christian denomination in the world (Eastern Orthodox church is one of the next largest in the world, and the Lutheran church is growing quite a bit also, especially in Africa)? These church bodies are still gaining converts also. Maybe it's because they do not use seemingly fad tactics to foster church growth.
This is not to say that each denomination (including Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, etc.) doesn't have it's own flaws (such as the mass/transubstatiation, reliance on church tradition, decision theology, foundations on eschatological opinions, etc.) but what is it that keeps drawing people towards the more "traditional", older church bodies? Even J. Budziszewski converted to the Catholic church.
Unrelated comments: I was raised going to church and Sunday school every week, and in a Christian home. I don't remember ever not knowing Jesus and what He did for me. That whole "testimony" thing doesn't work for people like me. We don't have conversion stories.
Funny that it's called an "altar call" when the types of churches that use that method don't have altars in their churches, haha.
14. Jessica said the following at 9:53 AM on May 15:
Joe Carter's comments remind of a lot of stuff on The Way of the Master a site run by Ray Comfort & Kirk Cameron. Two excellent messages to listen to by Ray Comfort are Hell's Best Kept Secret & True & False Conversion. Kirk Cameron's Soundly Saved is also very good. I cried through the ENTIRE message of True & False Conversion and I grew up saying the sinner's prayer. My brother made me a copy and it's so good that I listen to it over and over.
I think it's often dangerously incomplete to say "If you say this prayer and really mean it, you will be saved" or, once someone's said the sinner's prayer, "Now you're saved--the angels are rejoicing". How does anyone else but the person saying the prayer know if they are truly saved? Our job is to present the full gospel and then let the Holy Spirit do the saving and the assuring.
I love this article called Influencing Free Choice and it includes this excerpt: "My parents NEVER gave me assurance of salvation. I remember when I “finally” knew I was saved. I came home and told Dad, “I got saved today.” He replied, “Well, we’ll know in about 6 months.” He always said that the only person he knew for sure that was saved was himself, although he thought Mom was too.:) He knew his personality was strong and that what he said might give us kids his assurance instead of God’s assurance.Through his life and the Bible stories, I came to see that being saved meant knowing and loving God. It was NOT just a one-time experience, the event of asking Jesus into your heart... I grew up knowing for a certainty that when you know and LOVE Jesus, then it is the most consuming thing in your life...."
"Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.' Matthew 7:22-23
BTW, Ray Comfort actually uses the sinner's prayer sometimes. I love Ray Comfort's stuff. Anyone else a fan?
15. Ted Slater said the following at 10:31 AM on May 15:
Jessica -- I'm a big fan of Ray and Kirk. I republished an article Kirk wrote entitled "Sin: An Honest Mistake?" and conducted an interview with them which we published here.
Their approach is considered unusual by some, but I find it entirely biblical, from motivation to execution.
16. Lisa said the following at 10:44 AM on May 15:
I'm hesitant to be critical of "tactics." We're called to give an answer for the hope we have, and if it's borne out of the mercy we've received plus the very real work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, then does it matter how it's delivered?
In my opinion, we need a little less analysis and a little more action in our churches. We should be seeing folks "added to our number daily," but do we? Do we involve ourselves in the lives of unbelievers so as to give them a glimpse of what a transformed life can look like? Do we respond in obedience when God calls us to speak to a friend or coworker about our faith? Are we excited when we recount another week lived as a sinner saved by grace?
My dad was an evangelist. He carried tracts in several languages, and handed them out freely. He had what I thought were some outrageously "silly" lines that he used to introduce Jesus into conversations. He went door to door in his farming community and invited families to church. He liberally shared his "testimony" of being a hardened WWII vet who attended a revival service at a large city church and on the way home pulled the car over and in tears gave his life to Christ.
My dad used a lot of "tactics." But he died a few years ago, and at his funeral, we couldn't fit everyone into the church, including people that we didn't realize even knew my dad. Moreover, we didn't have enough time for everyone to tell his or her story of how my dad had impacted them. Stories of which we'd been previously unaware. "He introduced me to Jesus!" "I would've never set foot in a church if he hadn't invited me." "He stopped me in the post office and asked if he could pray for me right then and there." "I would be dead today if your dad hadn't shared that Scripture with me."
Tactics don't save. Jesus does. But I certainly believe he can use a prayer, a tract or a trip down the aisle to change a life. I'd love to see more aisles walked in my own church. I'd welcome a stack of tracts in my purse. I could stand to ponder my own "testimony" once in a while. If it reminds me that I'd be on my way to Hell were it not for the grace of God, maybe it's just what I need. And if it prompts me to point even one person to Jesus during my busy, self-filled day of generally tactic-less and lazy living, all the better.
17. xeres said the following at 10:46 AM on May 15:
Jessica, I watched some of ray comfort's Way of the master show. He does had important points. It reminds me of Francis Chan's message on the parables. According to him, the parables are told to convey truth in a way where it reveals a person's desire for it. As usual in many situations, only the disciples asked the meaning of the parable and 90% of the crowd pretty much don't want to make the effort to seek the truth.
On the sidenote, I didn't prayed the sinner's prayer when I became a christian 3 years ago. Actually, I confessed all my sin and offenses to God on paper. It took me several hours to fill the paper back to back. As I look at them, I was shocked on how many I did and how all of them were actually offensive to HIM. Thats when I got down on my knees and ask for forgiveness and put trust in Christ.
18. Ted Slater said the following at 11:28 AM on May 15:
Lisa -- I concur with you. Mark 9:38-40 speaks of someone preaching Christ differently from the way the Apostles were ... and Jesus commended that.
Philippians 1 talks about different types of evangelists, and affirms them whether their motivations are entirely pure or not.
While I cringe at some evangelistic attempts, I find others just fine. They may be strange, from a cultural perspective, but that doesn't necessarily make them wrong. Consider some of the behavior of the OT prophets, for example, or even Jesus (e.g., putting spitty mud in someone's eye, trashing the temple, denouncing church leaders, hanging out with a sexually immoral woman, etc.).
While some evangelistic methods may be lacking and may inspire a false sense of security (the "sinner's prayer," for example) many are not necessarily wrong.
I'm all for using good tracts, by the way.
19. Laura S said the following at 11:36 AM on May 15:
As a child, I said the sinner's prayer dozens of times, asked Jesus into my heart at least once a week, and raised my hand at every VBS altar call and Good News Club invitation each summer.
But it wasn't until the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the wooing of the lovely Lord Jesus brought me to the point of genuine conversion that I was saved.
However, I do believe that all those Good News clubs and VBS Gospel presentations and childish prayers were good seeds sown in my heart. I don't think we need to throw out the sinners prayer . . . God certainly used that in my life to show me my desperate need for a Savior.
BTW, where in the Bible do we evangelicals get the idea that"asking Jesus into my heart" is necessary for salvation?
20. Ted Slater said the following at 12:26 PM on May 15:
Laura S asks, "BTW, where in the Bible do we evangelicals get the idea that 'asking Jesus into my heart' is necessary for salvation?"
Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."
21. Becky F. said the following at 3:09 PM on May 15:
Ted, you mentioned Revelation 3:20. The context of that verse is within the message Jesus wanted John to deliver to the church at Laodicea. I would say that message is for people who already know Jesus, but are not living as if they do, hence Jesus' reference that the church of Laodicea is lukewarm. This message would be one for those who believe that Jesus is their Savior and Lord, but are not surrendering their lives to Him. It's not necessarily for one who has no faith in Christ yet.
22. Denise Morris said the following at 4:55 PM on May 15:
Revelation 3:20 also never mentions the "heart" anywhere, so I'm not quite sure where we get idea that He's knocking on the door of the heart.