BTS: Why don't we do alter calls?

Hey guys, welcome to episode number two of what we are currently calling His Hands Church behind the scenes.

Do we want to rename it already?

It's the second one.

We can rename it.

We said we would.

H H C B T S 2.0.

That's the rename.

Now with 50% more T.

It's like which letter does it get more of?

And T's the.

How do you have what does that even mean?

50% more of the.

More articles?

Isn't the an article?

Is that its grammatical classification?

Is it?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I should probably know that.

I went to school.

Okay.

So here's what uh here's here's what this is.

If this is the first one of these you've ever listened to.

And by the way, we said episode two.

You don't have to listen to episode one.

These all sort of standalone.

Um this is Nathan Fowler.

Hello.

I'm Justin McTear.

We are uh two of the people that lead His Hands Church.

And so what we want to do with this is basically create a conversation where we talk about some things that are very important to us as a church culturally, so that you, as someone who either goes to his hands or maybe you're interested, whatever, um maybe you maybe you're looking to find some dirt on us.

Maybe, maybe that's why are you doing that?

What do we ever do to you?

That's what I'd say to you.

But whatever your your intention, good or evil, is, we just want to pull the curtain back and we want to be able to give you sort of the inside scoop on why we do things the way we do, because we think it's important, especially if you are part of this church, yeah, to know that stuff.

So every episode we take a simple question and we just talk about it.

There's no script, we haven't practiced this, uh, we don't know what we're going to say.

Most of the time, we don't know what we're gonna say.

So it's kind of like nothing new.

Yeah.

It's the huge.

So here's here's the here's the question I want to I want to put out there.

And this is out this is funny because it's a very specific question, but it's a question I get asked more often than any other question I get personally.

I get these all the time.

Why don't we do altar calls at His Hands Church?

Why don't we do altar calls?

Now, just in case there's someone listening, maybe His Hands is your only uh church experience.

And so you're like, I don't know what an altar call is.

Nathan, will you please explain to everyone the concept of an altar call?

Let's examine that first, and then we can talk about why we don't do them.

Yeah, feel free to make fun of altar calls, not because they're wrong, because they're not, um, but because it is okay for us to laugh at church stuff.

Yeah, it's okay for us to laugh at ourselves as human beings.

It is.

And we work we work in church world, so we can make fun of it a little bit, and and you know what?

If if it's wrong, God'll kill us.

If not, I'm just joking.

That's a good point.

Like not just to even not assume that everyone knows what an altar call is.

That's actually like a good realistic perspective.

Yeah, we grew up in church, so we grew up in the in altar calls where it's very normal.

It was like it was a an essential ingredient, like on the to-do list on Sunday.

Oh, yeah.

You had to things had to be done.

Um but then there's probably a lot of people that just to even say altar call is w right.

What are you talking about?

It's kind of specific to probably a certain church experience.

But yeah, here we are.

We're in Atlanta, Georgia, and so we live in the land of altar calls, and we get asked a lot, why don't you why don't you all do altar calls?

So, Nathan, tell us what an altar call is.

So the the the idea of an altar call is it's usually just to take a few moments in a Sunday morning or if it's a Wednesday night or whenever you know an event is, but to me they can tend to be a little uh Well before hold on, before we we like pick it apart.

I'm not going anywhere.

Just what's describing it?

Let's do the what?

I'm just describing it.

Okay, all right.

This this from my perspective, all right.

It is usually a rather emotional moment um where you know it's it's laid out, okay, Jesus died for your sins.

Yep.

If you want to go to heaven and not go to hell, the way to do that is that you're gonna get up out of your seat, you're gonna walk all the way down the aisle and be down here at front, or you're gonna raise your hand and we'll we'll emphasize that every eye will be closed and head will be bowed.

Heaven forbid anyone else know that you raise your hand.

Why is this a shameful thing?

Right, exactly.

Nobody look at the people getting saved.

I'm like, Nobody look at them.

Yeah, if anything, it's like, dude, if you want to raise your hand, we'll like cheer you the heck on.

But no, the altar call, it usually I I do uh actually that part I do get, because it it can be a very private, vulnerable moment.

Um but so some will be to walk down the aisle to the front, actually to what would be like traditionally called the altar.

Sometimes it's raising your hand, but it's that moment where it's you're gonna repeat a repeat a prayer, almost like doing wedding vows.

Um and uh uh so that's kind of Yeah, it's a it's so it's it's a moment almost always at the end of a church gathering, of a worship service, or gonna call it elimination of that day.

The the person on stage gives everyone an opportunity in that moment to make a decision in that moment to say, I'm a Jesus follower.

And and they can do that by walking down the aisle, um coming up front, they can do that by raising their hand, and almost always there is this sort of element of, you know, when I grew up, it was always with every head bowed and every eye closed.

Yeah.

And I totally cheated, by the way.

I looked, I did that the same way I played heads up seven up as a kid in school.

I would like put my head down, but I wouldn't close my eyes, and I kind of like peek.

And especially the worst though is you knew you couldn't make any grow as a kid, you knew you couldn't make any sudden movements because then it'd be obvious, and the pastor can see you.

Yeah.

And so if he says, I see someone in the back, I'm like, who was it?

And so I might want to turn my head and look, but you just can't do it.

So, okay, so so why don't we do altar calls at his hands?

Now, I'll I'll preface this with this statement.

Nathan and I are not the ones that started His Hands Church.

We've been here for 10 years.

Uh we're in the lead roles now.

I lead the the church as a whole.

Nathan leads our worship team and he's a key leader in a lot of other things.

He's, you know, kind of my right-hand man.

And um, and so we sort of inherited a culture.

And the first time I got asked the question, why don't you do altar calls?

I had a really hard time answering it because it was one of the things that had always been part of our culture.

And I had to actually go have some time with God and go, why don't we do altar calls?

Should we do altar calls?

Are we missing the the boat?

Are we not going to think it through?

And I decided that we should continue in our normal, no altar call as a standard policy.

If God told me to do an altar call, I'd be like, okay.

Yep.

I have nothing against altar calls as a whole.

But there isn't, there's some interesting, there's some interesting stuff to this.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I'll just tell it in story form.

I had a guy, I don't know, six months ago come to me.

And it was one of those, you may have had meetings like this.

This is kind of unique maybe to people who work in church, but we'll pull the curtain back, let you into our real world.

So this person was meeting with me to ask me a bunch of questions about the church.

And it was like an interview.

He was it basically the the gist of it was I'm thinking about going here on the regular, right?

But before I do, it was the define the relationship conversation.

Relationship.

Before we're Facebook official.

And it's so funny because we don't even have official membership.

So it's sort of like, why and I I just wanted to get to know the guy.

I think that's what it was.

That's pretty cool.

That's what it was.

But he just wanted, you know, and hey, yeah, do your due diligence.

Make sure you actually agree with the church apart.

That's important, right?

So I'm I'm joking about it, but it was not there's nothing nefarious.

Or nefarious.

Is it nefarious or nefarious?

I think it's nefarious.

Maybe it depends on where you're from.

Could it be neferous?

Nefari nefarious?

I don't know.

There was nothing, there was no ill intent.

Nah.

But the one big question he had was you guys don't do altar calls.

And so in his mind, that was like us missing missing the boat on giving people a chance to get saved.

And so we're doing all this work and we're we're we're we're teaching the truth about Jesus.

We we talk about Jesus so much, I mean, because he's the point.

And so you're talking about Jesus a ton.

We we use a lot of scripture, we're not we're not like pulling that stuff out of it because we're afraid that too much Bible is gonna freak people out.

We we love the Bible and um think it's super relevant to life, so we talk about it all the time.

He said, You're doing all this stuff, you're worshiping, you're doing all and then you you just you stop short.

You don't have the moment that people need.

And I felt bad.

I was like, oh man, are we are we sure uh I'm like going through this this bit of kind of wrestling with it?

Yeah, yeah.

But then I stopped and I thought about a couple things.

Number one, um, the number of people that we've known that have gone all in with Jesus as part of this church.

We've been around for 10 years.

We we stopped counting the number of people that have decided to follow Jesus and then followed through and gotten baptized.

We know it's over a thousand, but we kind of stopped counting the thousand.

Yeah, I think all those signatures on the walls back behind where that tank is where people get baptized, and there's just signatures up and down the walls.

Yeah, everybody who gets baptized here signs this with this wall, and we just it's uh it's it's awesome.

It's actually really beautiful, but it's so random where the signatures are, and there's so many layered on top of each other now that you you couldn't count them if you tried.

That'd be like a form of torture.

We should use that as a punishment.

When someone steps out of line, we're like, go back and try to count the number of signatures.

You go count those signatures.

Oh man, that'd drive me.

Until you've had a chance to think about what you've done.

That's a good discipline tool for our children.

How can we get our kids to hate church?

Let's make them count all the signatures when they're when they misbehave.

So, anyway, so I thought about how many people have decided to follow Jesus here with no altar calls.

Right?

And then even more importantly, I started thinking about Jesus, which I think is a good thing.

He's always a good place to start.

And we have in scripture, we have all these all these messages that Jesus gave, all these moments where Jesus is teaching and and preaching, and never once does Jesus stop at the end and say, Okay, now's the moment of decision.

At this point in time, I need to know who's in, who's out, or or or even saying, hey, you know, like Peter didn't come up and start playing a guitar or an organ, and Jesus, you know, and that was everyone's cue that okay, it's yeah.

Start playing just as I am.

You know, okay, we're starting to stir things.

You know, Jesus brought his his his voice down to in a different octave, and and this is it.

And with every head bowed and every eye closed, who's ready?

So I started thinking about that.

Then I thought it went further.

I thought about Paul, who wrote so much of the the New Testament, and we actually have some of his messages or sermons, whatever you want to call them.

We have them recorded in scripture, we have them in the Bible, like in the book of Acts.

We see what he says, and never does Paul do this whole, okay, at this time, now that I've said what I've said, this is your chance.

This is it.

Never happens.

And yet people, you know, start following Jesus left and right, it becomes this movement.

We have the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts, which is this huge moment when the Holy Spirit first really showed up in a powerful way and just put his presence on all the people following Jesus.

And the Bible says that 3,000 people were saved that day, started following Jesus.

And it happened at the tail end of this message that Peter gave.

And again, no moment where Peter says, Alright, now that I've said my peace, this is the moment of decision.

Right.

And then I had a really weird thought.

I thought about the concerts that I've been to.

And I'm not a big like, I'm not like you.

Nathan's a musician, and and uh, you know, I never I haven't been to many concerts.

I don't go to a ton of concerts because they're expensive, yeah, but I do enjoy concerts.

Well, sure, because you can appreciate it at a level I can't.

But I've been to a couple that I of concerts I really liked, and I've never been to a concert where at the very end the band goes, Okay, now that you guys have seen our our you see our set, it's time to decide if you're gonna be a fan of the band or not.

This is the moment.

So with every head bowed and every eye closed, if you want to, if you decide, if you've crossed the line and you're now a fan of so weird when you put it that way, right?

Right.

I start starting to have all these thoughts.

And this is happening really fast in my brain.

And I actually think I did this thing where I probably came off as a jerk to the guy because he just asked, why don't you guys do altar calls?

And I kind of went with after having all these these thoughts, it's all rushing through your brain.

It's all fast.

I just go, Well, why don't you ask Jesus why he didn't do altar calls?

And so I had to pull back and be like, that's sound that came out wrong.

Um, but it is a relevant question.

Yeah, it is.

And so kind of unpacking all of that, which is a lot, um what what I what I came to, the conclusion I came to, and the reason that we still don't do altar calls on a Sunday, and I I I don't want this to sound hyper-spiritual, I don't want it to sound like, oh, look at how uh in tune with God we are.

But I also at the same time don't want the emphasis of how rare I think this actually is in church to be lost.

We trust the Holy Spirit.

My job is not to save anyone, right?

That's the Holy Spirit's job.

Yeah.

And so the Holy Spirit does his job really well.

And we we, on a Sunday by Sunday basis, we present in church terms the gospel, which is a word that means the the good news of Jesus.

We we present the good news, we tell people who Jesus is, we we dive into it, we spend a ton of time talking about Jesus.

He's he's the point.

And so we're we're always doing that.

And then we let the Holy Spirit do his thing.

And sometimes people are ready to make those decisions on the spot.

And we'll we'll mention at the end of a service, hey, if you're ready to follow Jesus, look, it's a it's between you and God, it's a prayer in your heart, but you don't have you know, there's no ritual you have to do, but we we help people connect the dots so they understand you can make that decision at any moment.

But sometimes people might need an hour to process what's stirring, sometimes they might need a week to process what's stirring.

And in my opinion, honestly, if we consistently uh force moments like that, what it what it really is is is us saying it's almost like we're saying, hey, what if the Holy Spirit doesn't actually move and stir in people's hearts and do what he promises to do?

Well, if that's the case, we should probably create a good, you know, a good backup plan.

And let's let's create this.

Let's just make sure.

It's just a little bit of insurance.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's it's easy to fall into that and and desire that because you know, I mean, we want for people's lives to be affected.

We want for people's lives to change.

That's part of what drew us both to being in this, part of what draws anybody to be part of a church where they kind of buy in and go all in and go, all right, I'm I want to be out there in the world spreading this message.

I want to be out there recruiting, pulling people into this family.

Um is that we're excited for people to become part of the family and to become uh uh a follower of Jesus, to become part of that relationship.

Um but you know, I kind of think of it in terms of like, you know how like there's a big difference between uh someone wanting to help you and listen to you and be there for you through something, and then someone who wants to fix you so they can feel good about having fixed you.

And it's always like really irritating when it ha like it's easy for any of us to fall into that with a friend or fill, whatever.

It's definitely easy as a church to fall on that and be like, think of people as things to be fixed or to do items to be done.

People to be saved.

Okay, they're saved, right?

Done.

See people, see people as converts, not and that's not true.

We're a little more complex than that.

Much more complex.

That's such a small part, an important part, but there's so much, much more to it.

And and I think it it honors that, honors the person over the moment.

The moment's important, but the person is what Jesus is after.

It's their heart.

Yeah, and and it's it's kind of interesting how almost in in life, when you force people to make a rushed decision, it's almost always something they they regret or something they have to they have to process on the tail end of.

Yeah, does that matter?

Then you wrestle with second guessing, even if it was the right decision and you do it, yeah.

Because in this moment of emotional we'll say we'll say just an emotional moment, but sometimes, just to be honest, it can border on emotional manipulation, right?

Because you start playing the music and you start like, oh, here it goes.

And in those moments, you you you rarely have the kind of confidence you have in the decision you've made than you do with a decision that you took some time on, right?

So it's like a big decision, it's worth taking the time.

It's huge.

And and so if you if you if you were to be in a relationship with someone and you ask them, if you ask them, hey, will you marry me?

And they said, I mean, I the hope is they just say yes.

And usually you wait to ask that question until it's kind of a done deal.

I think Megan and I were planning our wedding before we I actually proposed.

I mean it was uh I was not shocked at the answer.

She said yes.

But uh but if the person said, Can I have a day to think about it?

And you said, What if you die on the car ride home?

Oh gosh, you know what I mean?

And then try and add pressure.

If you try to or or no, i a decision that is made in the right time and and with the right amount of of thought and and wrestling, I'll use that word.

I those those tend to be decisions that we don't regret.

We have confidence in.

And so I I kind of grew up in uh church culture like you did, and I went to a lot of of youth camps as a kid.

Went to youth camp every summer.

Yeah.

And so I did you get saved with an altar call, by the way?

Is that was that your moment?

Um, oh man, I was eight years old, and it wasn't it wasn't and you just deeply repented for all your sin at eight years old.

I was like, oh man, oh god, please forgive me.

I'm I'm hooked on pixie sticks and I just can't quit.

I can't quit the sweet tea.

I just I didn't know what sweet tea was until I moved to Georgia.

Oh man.

Well, actually, Tennessee, Tennessee.

That's one of the things I love most about being in Georgia is sweet tea is so good.

Sweet tea.

Like when you put Splendor in it, that's what it no, no, I know I know now.

I grew up in Missouri and sweet tea was like.

Oh man, you scared me for a second there.

Yeah, I was eight years old and it was part of like a Sunday school, you know, it was a Sunday morning thing.

But I didn't feel pressured either.

And uh but at the same time for years, then I was like, is that really when that happened?

Did did I but I wasn't I didn't wrestle with it to the point where I was like, it's a pretty common story for people that grew up in church as kids and were involved a lot and went to church camps or whatever those things.

Like, it's a pretty common story to get saved like a couple times a year at every camp or event.

Oh yeah, like uh, I had to get saved again.

Like, what?

Like I got so I didn't have to deal with that because I think my parents helped helped me understand the decision I had made and go, no, it's it's done.

Like you are covered by Jesus, and now it's you.

My parents are really good about like helping me grasp as much as I could as a young person.

I feel like I'm just now really starting to get it, just starting to, you know, after all these years, that it's like, oh, it it is a relationship, just like my relationship with Katie, my wife.

That like this is an ongoing.

There's times where I'm like, I've known Katie, you know, Katie and I met in middle school.

And so there's times I'm like, I know her so well, I know everything about her, I know what she wants before she wants it, you know, or whatever.

But then there's moments where I'll just be like doing something in the kitchen, and she walks by, and I just have this moment where I'm like, I I've hardly scratched the surface of beginning to understand the layers and facet, like multifaceted complexity that is Katie as a person, you know.

And that's I think the more true.

Like, I think I do know her really well, but I go, so how much more the creator of the universe, like, of course, this isn't an instant thing.

This is a process, and it's a process that's good for me.

And I'm so my parents were pretty good about helping me understand it's not about making sure you did that like decision really good, so you better do it again just in case.

Like, they're like, No, no, no, don't worry about that stuff.

And so that really helped me.

So it was kind of an altar call, but but it but then I had the help to process.

Yeah, and so I had a similar, I was thinking I was 10, a few years behind you.

But uh oh wait, but I was 10 when you were only seven, so I'm still ahead.

So you were yeah, never mind.

That's what's important, that's what matters.

Um I'm older, but uh always I always will be.

You can't catch up.

I keep saying the uh no, so for me, I I you know, I'm 10 years old, similar decision.

Uh-huh.

But then I I got to high school or junior high, whatever I can't remember exactly, like late junior high, early high school.

Yeah.

I start going on these summer trips with with my my youth group to these camps.

Yeah.

And it's so funny because now I can look back on it uh with with kind of a cynical attitude, if I'm being honest.

We look back and it's like, oh, that was so much cheesier.

Oh my gosh.

But but I every youth camp I went on, I got saved again.

And I'll be honest with you, it was out of fear.

Because here it was almost like here's what the strategy was.

I don't think anyone sat in a room and planned it this way.

I think it was just sort of what was done.

So intended.

It was all it was almost like night one.

Get them to question whether or not they're really saved.

And here's how it would go.

It'd be like, are you a Christian?

And you're like, yes.

Are you sure?

Are you really?

Yeah, I'm sure.

What do you mean?

Well, and then you start listing off things that pretty much if you list these five things off, every teenager in the room is gonna start squirming, right?

Like uh sex, thinking about sex, drinking, partying, uh, smoking, you know.

You start listing off these these like things all teenagers struggle with and are tempted to do, and then it was, and you're like, oh man, yeah, I've one or two of those things are definitely things I've either done or thought about doing.

Right.

Um, and then all of a sudden the guy is like, would it would a real Christian do that?

Right.

And then and then that would be followed up by the the always, are you 100% sure that you're going to heaven?

If you died today, are you 100% sure you're going to heaven?

And then you'd be like, I'm like a solid 98% sure.

You know, I was 100% sure before you started talking.

But after that list.

And I'm now I'm like 98, 99.

And so then it would be this almost like, well, just in case the fire insurance thing, just in case.

So really when I look back at that, no one meant poorly.

I don't think there was anything going on that was intended very well.

It was well intended, but it was still manipulative.

Yeah.

It was emotional manipulation.

And I've struggled for a long time.

After I had raised my hand six times of those things, I was like, Well, when did I become a Christian?

Was it the fourth time?

The first and now I look back and I go, No, it was the first time.

It was the first moment that I understood it enough.

And I said, No, I want to be with Jesus.

And then what happened after that was my life was in process and I struggled and I had issues like every person does, but and I wasn't the perfect Christian, but I was trying to be, and I hadn't even realized yet you're not supposed to be a perfect Christian.

Perfect actually means complete in the Bible, and it means you allow God to complete something inside of you, not you have to strive for it.

So I did a lot of confusion because oftentimes things like altar calls amount to the church version of a high pressure sales type experience.

Like it's now you gotta you gotta do it now.

If you walk out that door, this deal may not be here tomorrow.

This car might drive off the lot, kind of thing.

Not that if you're a used car salesman, you're a high pressure person.

I'm just it's a stereotype, sorry.

But that that's how it sort of felt.

Um and so that's kind of why we don't do altar calls.

It's it's not because the altar calls are wrong, it's because we we have we've never done them, and we've seen over a thousand people go all in with Jesus, and we've just learned to not believe in anything that is artificially creating a moment when the Holy Spirit is gonna do it.

Like he's gonna do it.

Yeah, the Holy Spirit that moment, that decision, that relationship beginning as a conscious decision for that person is not dependent on a technique that we do.

No, and it's definitely not in scripture.

I mean, I go back to that.

There's no moment in scripture that we have a parallel for that.

And so, not that there aren't moments where people stepped up, that definitely happened, but but it's not like we're doing this, like we do Lord's Supper almost every Sunday at our church, and we do it for a very simple reason.

Jesus said, when you get together, when you gather, do this and is a way to remember me.

And we just take that at it at its face value and go, okay.

Yeah.

And so we take Lord's Supper a lot.

But there's no moment in Scripture where Jesus is, and here's how he did it, and we're following his model.

In fact, it's kind of funny because very few teachers, preachers, pastors follow any of the models Jesus used when he taught and led people to God, you know.

Um and and as we kind of wrap up, it sort of brings us to maybe a bigger picture part of our church culture at his hands, and that's is that we want to be an opt-in church.

Yeah.

So what we mean is we again, not only do we trust the Holy Spirit, but we also trust people to respond in the right moment at the right time.

And it really boils down, this is how we do our giving.

We don't pass plates or buckets around.

Um, we we talk about the need and then we trust God, you know, and trust me, like we've never done a giving campaign, but I've been tempted too many times.

Sure.

There there are months where I look at the bottom line and maybe giving was not good that month, and I go, that's it.

Next month we're gonna have it's time to have a you know a come to Jesus moment.

Yeah.

Which by the way, why the why is that a bad thing?

Well, why is that saying come to moment?

A come to Jesus moment.

Like, isn't that what we like the best moment in someone's life?

Probably because of altar calls.

Altar calls, boom, there it is.

That's funny.

That's funny.

So time to have a come to Jesus moment.

And and and I'll I'll and it'll make sense in my mind.

I can list all the reasons why we should, we should, we should have a campaign and we should, you know, position it this way and start making a plan, but then I stop and I have to ask that question.

Are we pressuring people?

And instead of planning and working hard and creating all this this stuff for this this campaign, and again, there's nothing wrong with giving campaigns if your church does that or whatever, that's fine.

But but I have to look at it and go, well, has God told me to do this?

And the answer is no.

And even more importantly, well, not more importantly than God told me to do it, but but something that's that's more consistent for our our culture here, because if we're gonna do something like that, it's it's a shift from our culture.

We gotta be clear that God's telling us to do it.

Right.

Um, there's nothing more important than God speaking.

But but I have to I have to stop and go, Whoa, have I prayed that God would just do it?

Have you asked yet?

Yeah, have I asked God?

Right.

And so rather than me go, oh man, let me take this in my own hands, because we know in the Bible when that happens, things go really well when people go not yeah, not at all.

But I sit there and I go, Well, when's the last time I prayed?

And I asked God to literally prompt people and move people.

And it's amazing how when we stop and do that, the response that we want happens without us having to do the work.

And so, you know, giving, we just we trust God to move, we trust people to respond.

Worship.

I mean, talk about that.

That's how I mean you lead worship and yeah, and and um that's one of the things I speak with, you know, we have a a really great mix of people on the worship team who have over the years uh either been with us a long time or are more new, and and one of the things that um stands out to musicians that have maybe served in church in the past on a worship team, one of the first things they notice and comes up in conversation, and I'm always glad it does, they they they kind of notice we don't tell people to raise their hands and we don't tell people to clap.

And I go, Yeah, that's right.

We don't we don't tell people to clap.

We don't tell people you have to stand up.

Mainly because people are terrible at clapping in rhythm.

That's not true.

No, no, no, no, no.

There have been times where people start clapping and then they gradually so hard it's way off.

Or there's that thing where people start clapping at the beginning of a song because it's just instrumental, but then there's a beat, and then the person starts singing, and then it just clapped, and then like a quarter of the people keep clapping, but the rest can't clap at the beat.

And then it just sort of slowly fades.

Anytime clapping starts with a song, it ends it ends poorly.

That is that's a theory.

Um but the the real reason is is you know, it's it's the scripture where where Paul wrote, don't do, don't give in response to pressure.

Yep.

And I, man, learning about that and really applying that in the context of worship, I'm like, I should not be as a leader.

I should not put people in a place where there's pressure for them to respond to in worship.

It should be an opt-in, it should be opt-in.

They should be free, and we should model what worship looks like.

And so we clap and we raise our hands, and there are times where we'll encourage, but we're very careful as best we can to manage that.

Hey, we're gonna be able to do that.

You say model what worship looks like.

Well, clapping and raising hands is not what worship looked like, but an unashamed passion for Jesus.

That is, and if that means clapping, dancing, all those shows, shouting, singing, whatever that is, it's great.

But if you start to feel like, wait, if I don't clap with everybody else, I'll look weird.

Yep.

Because what's communicated from the stage is someone going, all right, come on, everybody.

Well, now I'm applying pressure, and that that's not that person's freedom of choice, you know.

I I hope they still would choose to do that, but I'd much rather them be led by the Holy Spirit and their own freedom to go, you know what?

Yeah, you're right.

I want to clap, or I want to raise my hands, or I want to sing, or I want to dance, or they might just need the freedom to sit and reflect because that's what they need more than that.

And when you and when you let them do that, then when you have those moments where like the the the whole church is just they're in it, you know that's the result of the Holy Spirit movement.

What's God's doing, not mine.

Exactly.

And we don't go, oh, look, because it'd be so easy to say, everyone, let's give God a shout, and everyone raise your hands right now.

And again, there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself.

But then when people do it, you have to ask, or are they really doing it out of a genuine desire to, or are they just doing what they've been told to do?

And religion's all about people doing what they're told.

Yep.

Right.

So it is.

That's right.

That's right.

And we're not trying to be religious.

So, you know, you look at all those three areas.

You look at how we handle giving people a chance to get saved, you look at at worship, you look at giving, and it's all got to be opt-in.

That's right.

And we have to trust the Holy Spirit and people.

Holy Spirit needs to move, but he promises to do that.

And I I think he's way less likely to let us down than than you know anyone.

And then you have to trust people to respond because honestly, Jesus trusted God and people.

Yep, absolutely.

And so, you know, I just to kind of put the cherry on top, you know, going back to that original question, why don't we do altar calls?

I think we should be very careful in church about trying to, I don't want to use a really church analogy, but it's in the Bible, so it's totally okay.

Um not we gotta be careful about harvesting early.

Because in an agricultural sense, I've never been a farmer and I never will be, most likely, unless things go way differently than I have planned, but that could happen.

But you know, if if you plant seeds, and oftentimes in church, planting seeds is analogous to like, you know, you're you're teaching about Jesus, you're you're getting the message out there, and then you you water the seeds, which is you know, discipleship and and continuing to come alongside people.

And then the second you see a little shoot come up, you grab a hold of that and pull it out of the ground.

That was not ready.

That was bad.

Don't that was not it's not there.

It's not ready.

And sometimes in church that's what happens.

The second we we we sense any type of uh of stirring or movement or growth, we want to like take it to completion.

Yeah, but that's not how life works.

We right we yeah, exactly.

And instead, maybe just let let God do his thing, create an environment that lets God do his thing, and then let people respond in their own time.

And again, and you know, if we had gone six months and we had seen nobody come forward and uh follow Jesus or or no one get baptized, uh we we might have to stop and go, this isn't working, you know.

Maybe maybe we're wrong.

Let's throw it all out.

Altar calls are the thing, but we've never seen that happen.

So anyway.

Um yeah, why why don't why don't we do altar calls?

We can phrase it.

Why?

Why don't we?

Why don't we?

Why don't we?

Why don't we?

Usually it's why don't you do altar calls?

Like in this very like, hey, you know, I had a person, we'll wrap up on this.

I had a person uh ask me, well, yeah, but what happens if they die in a car accident on the way home after church?

I was like, don't put that on me.

That's not up to me.

And like in this scenario, am I did I did I cut their brakes?

Is that what you're suggesting?

Like, why are you putting this on me?

You know, like it was very much like you're not like like I'm gonna get to heaven and God's gonna be like, all right, Justin, I'm gonna walk you back to May of 2016.

You you preached a good message, but you didn't do an altar call, and Ricky died on the way home.

Oh my gosh.

No, like that was the scenario they were almost playing out.

I'm sitting there going, that that's religion, man.

That's just religion.

Right.

And uh, and that that I don't I don't need that kind of pressure.

Well, and and we're not supposed to make decisions out of fear.

Exactly.

So let's not put fear on people.

There you go.

And mess with their decisions.

Yeah.

Should we stop?

We should probably stop talking about altar calls.

Yeah, let's move on to something.

Okay, with every head bowed and every eye closed, let's wrap up this podcast.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.