Midweek Podcast - Altar Calls

Hey Madison.

Hey Justin.

So you're wearing a hat?

I'm wearing a hat.

It's kind of got like a little bit of a military vibe to it.

It's not a military hat, but it's just dark and has a It's from camp.

Okay.

You got a kind of camo colored shirt on.

It's a his hands shirt.

I know.

I know.

And you're rocking a mustache.

My point is.

Maverick is what I'm going for.

I guess he doesn't have a mustache.

Who has a mustache from Top Gun Goose?

There you go.

Goose had a mustache.

And his son in Top Gun 2 had a mustache.

Did you see Top Gun 2?

Top Gun Maverick?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

The same thing.

Yeah, no, no.

Yeah.

It's a really enjoyable movie.

But it's so it was so interesting to me because like uh Goose's son has the same like mustache as his dad, which is fine.

It's like an homage to my my dead dad.

But then like he sits down at the piano, he plays the same song, plays the same song, and everyone in the bar is incredibly familiar with that song.

And it's a really old song.

And I feel like they should have just had him play a song.

A song.

Yeah.

And it would have been just as effective at Maverick being like this reminds me of something.

It probably wouldn't have had the like same movie nostalgia.

No.

But you're saying I look like a fighter pilot, which is a good I accept the compliment.

I was you were actually the one that took it to fighter pilot.

You cut me off.

What were you gonna say?

Just general law enforcement.

That's fine.

You know?

Yeah.

So Sargent, I was gonna maybe that can be your new nickname.

Please no.

Sarge.

What do you think, Zach?

Sure.

Zach says sure.

Sarge.

Hey, so it's Justin and Sarge here with the uh midweek podcast.

Justin and Sarge.

The Sarge.

Let's do that.

Justin and the Sarge.

No.

Can you have like a cigar?

Like a chewed cigar?

Yeah.

Oh man.

This is a really uh purposeful intro.

What are you gonna talk about?

Altar calls.

Altar calls.

Yeah.

Perfect segue.

Will you ever what's an altar call?

Okay.

So here's why we're we're discussing this topic.

Um it's actually a question we get fairly often.

I had it really recently from an awesome guy uh that was at one of our newcomer gatherings.

Um, led to a lot of great discussion.

But the question was hey, why don't you guys do a uh traditional sort of end of service if you're ready to make this decision?

You know.

So do you raise your hand or do you come to the front?

What's the well, what's your context for altar calls?

I would say I've experienced a few point I didn't finish.

It's a point of decision that is built into the service.

Right.

And it's very much designed for you to make a decision right now in a public setting before you you walk out of these doors, right, wrap it up, make the decision.

And that's been something that is fairly common in the American Western church.

Yeah.

What I've mostly associated with that is salvation.

Correct.

Decide to be saved.

Correct.

And raise your hand, or I've even seen text a number, which is kind of fun, a funny like text saved to 84321.

Text woo.

Yeah.

Um, and so I've always associated with that salvation.

Do do people I guess when you do it every week, are there other responses that are people are calling where it's like if you want to step into missions or if you want to uh maybe um I have seen that too on a slight note more like a church camp setting.

Sure.

Um rededication is one, which isn't really even a biblical term.

It's not unbiblical in the sense that it's wrong, but uh it's sort of just like, or if you are a Christian but it's not going well, and it's been maybe a long season of prodigal son situation sort of situation, it can be a return with some, you know, so that that's usually the context.

I grew up with very altar calls are very normal.

So I grew up in a in a small, uh I say small, it wasn't that small, but like a smaller than his hands, Southern Baptist Church, and really grateful for it.

I don't knock that at all.

I learned how to really value scripture, and there was a lot of positives.

I wouldn't be a Jesus follower today if not for it.

Uh we did an altar call at the end of every service, but it was very specific.

It was a hymn that would play, and it was almost always this old hymn, just as I am, and it would play, and everyone was you're supposed to have your head bowed and your eyes closed.

That was always the the buzz phrase for me growing up was every head bowed and every eye closed.

And then you always peeked.

Yeah.

Because as a kid, you wanted to know.

And usually no one came forward, but sometimes someone someone did.

They would they would indicate by raising their hand or coming forward.

And the pastor would like wait at the front and pray with someone to pray with them.

And then when that happened, it was not that often, but when it did happen, when we all, when the song finished, we all look up and you'd see someone at the front, for example, he would say, Hey everybody, this is this is Sarge.

And he he's uh he's made a decision today, and then everyone would kind of cheer.

And you know, I'm imagine after that there were further conversations and whatnot.

Um probably the biggest context I have for altar calls was youth camp because there would be a large crowd and generally very emotionally driven messages, and and a huge population of people who probably haven't decided to follow Jesus yet.

Correct.

So there's like Yeah, it's like fertile kids kind of opportunity.

And you know, that would always include lots of kids raising their hand, and I raised mine at three or four different youth camps.

Which one did you get saved at?

The first one.

I so I actually didn't get saved at youth camp.

I gave my life to Jesus for the first time, like made that decision, prayed with my mom at home, and then I was it was over a vacation Bible school at the church that we went to.

We'd been going to church for about a year and a half, and it just made sense.

I wasn't, I mean, I was 10.

I didn't have a turn my life over.

Like I wasn't, you know, I was 10 years old.

Walking away from a life of sin, but you were acknowledging that.

I knew I understood who Jesus was, and I wanted to, yeah, I I believe in Jesus.

I want to follow Jesus, and this is the next step.

And uh I remember the pastor of our church after that asked me, so do you know for sure that you're going to heaven now?

And I remember saying, I think so.

And he was like, Well, you gotta know more, you gotta have more than you think so.

And I remember being like, Well, what if I'm not?

You know, or so right away, I already had doubt.

But um, but no, I I I meant it.

Like that was a at that time, I wasn't faking it.

I wasn't Did you get baptized?

I got baptized about a year after that.

Okay.

When I was about 12, 11 or 12, somewhere in that range.

Um, but then we would go to youth camp every summer, and our youth group would join with all these other youth groups, and it was just hundreds and hundreds of kids.

And I could be cynical about it if I wanted to, but I don't want to be too cynical.

But a lot of times the the gist of those youth camp experiences was almost like night one, are you really a Christian?

Are you sure?

Are you 100% sure?

Because if you're 99% sure, that's not so there's almost a lot of uncertainty that was sort of sown.

And it's not hard with a giant, if you have a thousand teenagers, if you say, you know, do you have this, this, this, and this in your life, you can name four or five things for it pretty fast that you cover the maybe I'm not saved.

Correct.

And then there was almost a lot of I would say slightly fear-based, want to make sure my bases are covered, guilt ridden from twisting your arm into repentance, yeah, and just being afraid.

I mean, I had sin in my life, I had issues that I knew weren't good, and then it was like, oh no.

And that did create for me a little bit of a crisis for a while.

And you said which one was the the real one.

And for a while I didn't know.

I had to I had a little bit of a uh, you know, a battle with that.

So yeah, so I guess on Sunday morning, when do they have the chance to make those decisions?

And should that be part of the service?

I think that's what the altar call is creating room for.

And there's nothing wrong with it.

There's room for response.

And correct.

I think I guess the the criticism on the other side is, and maybe this is where that guy was coming from, is like you give a great message, you have great worship, we witness great baptisms, and then everyone leaves.

And so what he's probably saying is like, wouldn't it be crazy?

You missed an opportunity if yeah, at that moment when they've like the Lord's done obviously great work, what do we do next?

Kind of thing.

It's like the uh this is a weird analogy, but it popped in my head uh because I have kids who watch Disney movies.

It's like uh The Little Mermaid, the song you gotta kiss the girl, you know?

The the is Sebastian's a crab, yeah, he's a crab, right?

Yep.

I always thought he was a lobster when I was a kid, but then and I said that one time, I was like, he's a crab.

Yeah.

And I was adamant that he was a lobster.

But then I watched, I was like, okay.

So I just haven't seen a lot of crustaceans in my life.

Um, but you know, it's like, hey, everything is in that song, it's like, come on, man.

Take this moment.

Take this moment.

And um, and I think that is the the question is are we missing?

We don't, we have not as a church done altar calls.

So are we missing some awesome moment?

Are we getting right up to the precipice of life change and then just gun shy?

Right.

And people aren't following Jesus because of that.

What do you think?

What's your answer to that?

You're part of this church.

I think uh as I've experienced it, being in leadership, and maybe this is where it's like, I think that that moment kind of just gets shifted to other places.

And so on Sunday I had a young guy come up to me and I could tell he was kind of emotional, and I was like, hey man, like everything okay?

And we like had a hug and started talking.

And he's like, I just know that it's like time for me to get baptized.

And I was like, Okay, cool.

Like, here's have you been baptized before?

I always ask that, just give me some context for where you're coming from.

He's like, No, I haven't.

And uh I was like, Well, are you like willing to like you believe that Jesus is who he says he is?

He's like, Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Right.

Are you willing to like surrender even the most like major things in your life to him?

And he was like, Definitely.

So I got to share in that moment, and the church as a community won't witness that moment until the Sunday we baptize him, and hopefully I'll be able to get to share a little bit of that story.

So it's like people are still participating in those moments.

It's just shifted, I think, mostly toward baptism and the conversations about salvation are happening one-on-one.

Right.

Baptism is the public thing that we see.

And it's funny because I always was told that baptism is the like public sign of your inward decision.

But I also grew up in a church culture that even the inward decision was made to be outward immediately.

Sure.

Like you don't make that decision on your own, you make that decision in this moment.

And so let's just back it up for a second.

Um, I've had a lot of people ask this question over the years, and I have I've wrestled with this myself.

You know, I've said before, I think on this on this podcast, but I'm the second guy in leadership here in terms of, you know, the pastor of the church.

And when you're the second guy or the third or whatever, you have a unique challenge in that you have to figure out what needs to be preserved and what needs to be changed.

Um, it's really easy to come in and change everything, and that doesn't go well if you unless the church is like a disaster.

Um, so you have to figure out what do we preserve, what do we not preserve.

And the interesting thing for me was when I was on staff here for seven years before I was the lead pastor, I wasn't the one giving the messages, deciding if there's an altar call or not.

I had never, it was a weird simultaneous thing.

I had never been part of a church that didn't do altar calls.

At least a church like his hands.

Sure.

I did go to a church in college that was kind of a seeker-sensitive church, which we would be a whole of other conversation, but they didn't do altar calls.

But I'd never been part of a church that was really outward in its worship and declaration of Jesus, whatever.

That didn't, I never been a part of a church like that that didn't do altar calls.

Simultaneously, I'd never been part of a church that had people getting making decisions as frequently.

So it's this weird thing where like, well, we don't do this thing that I was grown up to believe that you gotta do, right?

To because otherwise people aren't going to decide to follow Jesus.

I've never been part of a church where as many people are deciding to follow Jesus.

So that was always this interesting thing.

So when I became the lead guy and I, for the first time was the one being asked these questions, I started to do research.

And one of the things I found that was interesting is I used the phrase traditional earlier, the word traditional to describe altar calls, this traditional thing.

It's it depends on how you define traditional.

Altar calls are a very new phenomenon in the history of the church.

That's something I learned.

Like this was not it's like Jonathan Edwards, like that season, like 17, late 1700s.

Late, 1700s, 1800s, um revival evangelism kind of stuff, big tent, you know, gatherings and all that.

But in the in the entire history of Christianity, if you look at it, you know, there's a there's a 17, 1800 year period of time where that's not a thing that ever really happens.

I mean, I'm sure you can find exceptions here or there, uh, like with any movement.

But that hit me.

Like, okay, well, this is a newer thing.

So I don't, at the very least, I don't need to say, well, I am breaking with like we're not ever gonna do communion as a church.

Like I'm not breaking it's not a sacrament.

It's not like it's not like this is a holy ritual that God has ordained that we have to do.

Jesus never said, and remember, uh, and then I asked the question, well, is it biblical?

Um, and biblical, like, is it in the Bible?

Right.

And I guess what what would you say is the closest altar call we have in the I'm trying to think of so I can't think of many.

I it's always connected to baptism or the receiving of the Holy Spirit.

So there's like a a couple moments in scripture where someone gives a message and people respond.

Like Pentecost would probably be the closest I can think of when Peter and the rest of the disciples preach and then a bunch of people make decisions.

Yes.

But even in then we don't Peter's message is obviously a very come to Jesus message.

But it's it's clarifying what's been happening.

Correct.

Yeah.

So it's not like a it's not like a in the regular life of the church, here's a message.

I think of the letters, like the letters in this in the Bible, like there's not like at the end of the letters, which would have been read publicly, you know, this is Paul like communicating to everybody.

Uh, at the end of the letters, there's not like um, and now here's this specific moment, but there are specific moments all throughout the thing that's like come to Jesus as correct.

And so even in the Pentecost moment, it says, you know, when they finished, and then 5,000 people gave their like started following Jesus at that point, the church grew.

But it never, you never have a moment where Peter says, and now, right now, with every head bowed and every eye closed.

So at the very least, we have to admit that I'm not, I don't think altar calls are wrong.

I don't think a church, I would never say this is not a podcast about how all churches should not do altar calls.

Right.

Right.

But I had to look at it and go, okay, hold on.

I'm the second guy.

I've never been part of a church that's had this many people making decisions to follow Jesus.

And baptism is not the same as salvation, but we don't confuse the two.

We make sure we like you did with that kid.

Right.

We have conversations with people.

And even on Sunday, we had a couple people get baptized.

And I said on stage to everyone there, hey, this is what's going on.

They've already made a decision to follow Jesus.

That's happened personally in their lives.

They've decided that they're going to follow him for the rest of their lives, that he is their Lord and Savior.

And uh, and we teach enough on Jesus that people know what that means.

Right.

Um, and then now they're making this decision public, they want everyone to know.

So we, you know, we do as good of a job as we can to help people not confuse the two.

But never been part of a church where this is happening this much.

Here we are 10 years, or not 10 years, what are we, 15 years in, 16, 17?

Right, yeah.

Something like that.

2005.

What year is it?

Oh my gosh, we're 19 years in.

Yeah.

And we've had uh over 2100 people get baptized.

You know, that's a lot.

Yes.

And so, and all that's been without altar calls.

Now, one moment, one argument might be, but what if you had done altar calls?

Right.

It'd be 5,000.

Maybe.

Maybe, and maybe it would.

Yeah.

I mean, that that's fair.

I'll also say that some of this goes toward our non-religious uh identity as a church, like culturally.

Like even you saying altar calls, I just kind of, as you were talking, took a step back and went, What's an altar?

Right.

Like we don't we don't call anything in our church an altar.

Correct.

So to say to even come to the front for an altar call, like it just wouldn't it wouldn't make sense.

And I I don't even know if that's I what is the altar in the church?

Is that like a the front symbolic?

It is symbolic.

I mean, like representing the old testament altars where you would come to make a sacrifice to God.

Really what's happening?

I mean, it's religious language.

Almost all religious places have like a sacred spot, so to speak, you know, an altar where a sacrifice would be made.

And so the idea of an altar is this is where you're laying something down.

Gotcha.

You're making your sacrifice.

We don't worship that way anymore, right?

So, but if you were to go forward and give your life to Jesus, like laying on it.

I'm laying my life down.

Okay, cool.

Um, and so yeah, growing up, even in a a traditional Baptist church, it was an altar call.

But there, I can't, if you would have asked me at 14 where's the altar, I'd be like, I think it's the stairs that lead up to the pulpit.

The pulpit's the stairs that lead up to the pulpit.

You know, what is the altar?

But here's let's let's flip it though.

And so I've thought about should we not?

I've had messages where it feels like, oh man, if I were to right now.

You're saying in a manipulation, manipulative kind of way.

Well, I don't, I wouldn't even go that far.

I would just say that I've had moments where I've gone, I mean, it feels like if I were to say this, if I were to do the every head bowed everyacology, someone would sure would respond.

I struggle with this personally, I'll be really honest.

Because, and you and I have had these conversations.

It's kind of like the conversations I've had with you.

If maybe attendance hasn't been awesome for a couple of weeks, and I really feel like sending an email and hyping a Sunday up, like you guys.

Right.

You got to.

But if I know in my heart that my motivation for that is that I want to see a I want to feel better what I'm doing.

It's interesting.

I don't do that, right?

I don't do that.

Maybe I have before, but it's it would be a few times if I have.

Like I'm not saying I've I've perfectly, but I'm I'm saying I'm I I hear those thoughts and I go, nope.

When I feel that temptation, maybe I don't know if that's the right word.

When I feel the desire to send an email like that because I want to see more people here next week because I'm not satisfied with how whatever.

That and that's just flesh stuff.

I'm being honest.

I have a little spiritual conversation and I go, hold it, hold on.

A, it's not about how many people come.

I do that whole thing.

B Lord, are you calling me to do this?

Or is this just me?

Which you have to tell yourself.

It sounds somewhat ridiculous, but you do.

It's well, because so much of what we do as a church is unmeasurable.

Like, how do you measure?

If you're a business, you have things you measure, right?

Like profits and all that kind of stuff.

How do you measure life change in people's lives?

Salvations, baptism, attendance, there's only a few ways you can do that.

Otherwise, you're just trusting that I think people grew spiritually today and they are more mature and less likely to it's all unknown.

Right.

Um, so anyway, my point with that was that when I've had those moments and I've resisted that, and then very often it's amazing how often there will be a big uptick.

And I'm grateful in those moments because I go, oh, I would have thought I did it.

And now I'm like, God did it.

I didn't I didn't have to try to take control of that.

So I I'll say this again, altar calls are fine.

They're not un, they're not unbuilt, they're not biblical in the sense that we're told to do it in the Bible, like we're told to baptize.

Right.

If we start stopped baptizing people, we would be disobeying what Jesus said.

But Jesus didn't tell us to do altar calls.

But they're not unbiblical in the sense that they're wrong.

And we probably don't do them, we do offer that chance to respond.

It's just not happening in the room.

Correct.

Right.

That was my point.

Is the flip side of that is trusting the Holy Spirit to bring people to that point of decision, like what you were describing, that that kid coming up to you.

So I would I tell people all the time when they ask, maybe I should have started with this a long-winded way of saying it.

When people say, Hey, why don't you do altar calls?

I usually go reverse it a little bit and go, Well, let's let's ask a more important question.

Are you asking, why don't you present the gospel?

And they'll they'll usually go, Oh, no, no, I think you guys do a really good job of presenting the gospel, meaning the core message of Jesus almost every Sunday.

We do Lord's Supper every Sunday, and that gives us a really awesome moment to do that.

And so we we explain every single Sunday through Lord's Supper that Jesus died on the cross, died for our sins, that this is the only means we have of forgiveness and mercy.

And then we have people who baptized almost every Sunday.

So we have this really awesome example to point to, and like, oh, and by the way, here's someone doing what, you know, living this out.

Um, but we do present the gospel, and what I have found is that at his hands, it's sufficient.

We present the gospel, we teach it, we are laser focused on Jesus, we teach his word.

Uh people see other people making these decisions to follow Jesus on a really regular basis.

Like it's rare for us to have a Sunday without a baptism.

And we have people constantly making decisions without the kind of momentary opportunity, you could say sometimes pressure.

It does often go in a pressure-filled way.

And I've really been blessed to know that when someone gets baptized, I know that they're not doing it in response to a very emotionally driven moment.

Because what I saw a lot with myself and with a lot of other people in my generation is there's a lot of people who made an altar call decision in a big crowd, in a hyped up moment.

And then years later, they're like, I don't think that was real.

I just I think I was caught up in the moment.

Yeah, I think it also opens the door to discipleship, which I think is really special.

So, like in your messages, you do give moments to respond.

So I know.

We're saying there's not like a um scheduled out moment with every head bowed and every eye closed, but you will say something to the effect of like like you're saying with Lord's Supper, you're you're explaining the gospel, and the way we just say to respond to that is it's kind of funny and logistical, but it's like, and if you have made that decision, sign up at the Connect Desk or you know, go there's an assumption of a decision has to be made.

Yeah, right.

And so just yeah, what I think it actually opens the door to is discipleship.

So and I've even said, not to cut you off, I've even said as clearly as you need to follow Jesus, I'll say this fairly often.

Like, hey, if you don't, if you haven't decided to follow Jesus, glad you're here.

You need to.

Right.

He is he is the answer.

Right.

You can't have a relationship.

We'll we'll talk about all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And so what's really special being like someone who's not on stage or not in the big room on Sunday mornings is then I have people of all ages that end up coming to talk to me about what that process is looking like.

And it happens in a more personal.

And I'm sure it's happening all over the church where it's like people are talking to you after church, people are talking to even the baptism team, people are talking to the prayer room.

I mean, there's a lot of people that go to the prayer room.

And you know, I think it's interesting.

I I get number one, we're Americans, and so we're Western.

And it's important to recognize that the history of Christianity is much bigger than Western ideas.

We're very like efficient, like, yeah, you got X, Y, like boom.

We we invented the assembly line.

Right.

We're like, make the thing happen.

We're also very individualistic, individualistic, all that.

But Jesus' day, I mean, people he would teach, and people would start following him.

And for the most part, except for personal times where he goes to the disciples and says, Come follow me, it's like, well, why are they following him?

Right.

He never asked them to.

He just sort of teaches and he goes, and like, we want we want more of that.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And so I think for me, what I have to always go down to this is what we can maybe wrap up on, is altar calls are not wrong.

They're not unbiblical in the sense that we're doing something we shouldn't do if we do them.

We're not warned about them necessarily in scripture.

They're also not traditional and biblical in the sense that, oh yeah, we are told in the Bible to do them.

And for the entire history of Christianity, altar calls have been one of the so it's in this weird category of something that's a new tradition.

For the last couple of hundred years, in the Western church, altar calls have been a thing.

And for most American Jesus followers, that's all they've known.

So it's easy to think, well, this is the way you're supposed to do it.

Well, it isn't the way people did it for a really long time.

And the church grew and grew and grew and covered continents.

And so I say all that to say this is something we have the option to do.

We're not commanded to do it.

Right.

We have the option to do it.

We have uh references we can look at of when this is done, here's what happens.

And then we have to ask the question, is this what we're supposed to do?

And because I've I see so many people giving their lives to Jesus on such a regular basis, and I've also experienced the negative side of creating moments and they can very easily uh lean toward emotionally driven borderline manipulation because you feel like if I don't make it right now, I'm because I've seen how that plays out negatively and how much doubt people who make those decisions have, I just love the fact that we are presenting the gospel, we're giving people a clear understanding of what it means to follow Jesus.

People are seeing other people decide to do that and they're seeing it modeled for them.

Right.

It's not hard to jump in and join that process.

And I know that when someone gets baptized, I go, I know we didn't pressure them to do this.

Right.

And so I feel like a confidence that this is a journey they've been on with God and the Holy Spirit and they're ready.

That we haven't pushed them before they were they were ready.

Because if you try to harvest before a plant is ready to be harvest, it doesn't work.

And sometimes I think it's easy to feel a pressure to do that because we want to have it happen now, but maybe it's supposed to happen two weeks from now.

Yeah.

And there's kind of a trust that goes in with that.

So I feel confident.

What would you do if you were given the opportunity to speak at a special event?

Like let's say it's for young people, college kids or high school kids, like a camp and you're you're this you're the speaker at camp.

Would you that's a good question?

Would you have been asked to do that?

Never do an altar call.

No, I wouldn't say that.

I wouldn't say that.

I don't think that altar calls are are wrong.

Right.

Um because those are honestly the places where I for me, every week at church just feels like a little, a little much.

Like it feels like it could be like that's a little much.

But like if you're at a men's retreat and you're preaching at a men's retreat, yeah, there can be special moments where it's a context where it's like we've carved out this time for the Lord.

Yeah.

Of course, response.

Well, like, let's ask this question.

So you went to a lot of the youth camps, uh well, I say camps.

Ours was called the road trip.

Sure.

Because we did our own thing, but now we went to camp last year.

You went to camp last year, it's kind of grown to the point where the road trip is not feasible anymore.

And the world has changed.

The world has changed, Madison.

Um, but but before it changed, right?

When you were a student, I mean, were those youth trips substantial building blocks of your faith?

Yeah, definitely.

Did we do I'm trying to think if we did altar calls?

I don't that's where I'm saying you we wouldn't call it an altar call, but the same functional moment was happening.

Correct.

Like I remember the one year that I don't know if you remember this or not, but the theme was sort of surrendering everything to Jesus.

And I had this diagram of like a house that I gave everybody.

Yeah.

And it was like, hey, look at your life like a house, different aspects of your life are the rooms.

Have you let Jesus into all of those rooms?

And that was the call was to open the door.

Right.

And let's then it's like, and we're just gonna have like quiet worship time for the next 20 minutes, like or 10 minutes, or whatever it is.

It's like, well, functionally that's the same.

And then the next day we had baptisms in a room.

Right.

So yeah, no, it's not wrong.

Again, uh, maybe that's a really good way to put it.

The way you're saying is, hey, it's is it's a useful tool.

Is it an every Sunday morning built into the service?

Can't really say we've had church without it tool.

Right.

Not really.

I don't think so.

And it would be one thing if we're like you could accuse us of saying, hey, there's no no one getting saved.

And I by the way, don't when I say accused, I don't feel like the guy who was asking me that question a couple weeks ago, he wasn't accusing, he was curious.

A clarification.

I'm used to that being a normal step in the service.

Yeah.

Where is that?

Yep.

Yeah, that's cool.

So it's not no altar calls ever.

It's just not as a regular practice.

Not as regular practice.

And maybe, maybe as a church, because of where we are in sort of church history, because we're always sort of responding to the world we're in.

I know that when we started, we might we're probably a little bit we're definitely careful, very careful and very intentional about not pressuring people to do what we believe the Holy Spirit is already working on in their lives.

Let the Holy Spirit tie the tie the knot, tie the bow around it, finish things.

Don't try to push it, because yes, that can lead to a lot of hands going up, but it I've also seen it lead to like, where are those people five years later?

Right.

Are they, you know what I mean?

So yeah, it's an interesting conversation.

We haven't done ultra calls as part of a regular service.

We don't judge anyone who does.

We're probably not gonna add that anytime soon.

But if the Lord told us to, we would.

Cool.

Well, appreciate it.

Thanks, Sarge.

I'm not trying to make fun of you.

No, it's like I like the look.

I like no, I like the look.

It's just I think you I saw the mustache on Sunday and I thought it was great.

I think he's great.

Go for it.

You actually have a great mustache.

Um, I don't.

Mine's very like thin and wiry hair, but I'm looking straight to camera hoping that Zach zoomed in.

He will the mustache is great.

I just I think it's the combination of the black hat.

And then like the brownish color.

It's it's there's a military sort of I get it.

All right.

Thanks, George.

All right.

All right.

Let's uh, Captain.