When I first started pastoring, an older couple moved to town to be close to their children and grandchildren. They began attending our church and quickly became dear friends to my wife and me. When they decided to join the church, the husband told me that he loved everything except our lack of altar calls.

His concern made sense. As a young man, he had responded to the gospel during an altar call. He came forward, professed faith in Christ, and that moment profoundly shaped him. Many believers have a strong emotional attachment to altar calls like he did. And I certainly understand that.

But here is why I do not make altar calls on Sunday as well as what I believe is the biblical alternative.

The Anxious Seat

Altar calls trace back to Charles Finney. In addition to denying that the conversion was the exclusive work of the Holy Spirit, Finney also believed that revival could be produced through certain methods and techniques. One such method was the “anxious seat,” a place at the front where he would bring people and work them into an emotional state to provoke a response.

Altar calls grew out of that practice. Of course, most churches do not practice them with Finney’s intensity, but the fundamental principle still remains: using a specific technique to secure a visible, immediate response.

Every church that I have been a part of outside of my current church has used altar calls, so I am no stranger to the practice. Indeed, some of those churches did them as well as they can possibly be done. Nevertheless, I still believe that they are unnecessary and often unhelpful.

To be clear, a worship service should end with a call to repentance. If there are unconverted individuals present, they should be urged to come to Christ. Believers who are walking in sin should be summoned to confess and turn from it. The question is not whether there should be a call to respond to God’s Word, but how that call should be given.

The Table as the Ultimate Invitation

Here is my central concern: altar calls unintentionally replace what Christ has already given to the church, the sacraments or ordinances.

This realization was part of what drew me into studying the practice of weekly Communion, for one of my guiding questions was: what is the best biblical way to call people to repentance? And the more I considered that question, the more I became convinced that the Lord’s Supper already is a call to repentance.

If we practice the Lord’s Supper regularly and intentionally, repentance is placed before the congregation each week, and not through humanly invented methods but through Christ’s ordained practice.

In an altar call, the unconverted are summoned to the front. During Communion, the repentant and baptized are invited to the Table. Both require a response.

At our church, individuals and families come forward to receive the bread and cup. There is a beauty in the Table being set before us, and the congregation rising and coming to Christ as an act of faith and repentance.

But whether the elements are served or taken is less important than the reality unfolding: the Table calls Christians to repentance and, by implication, unbelievers to Christ.

I typically frame the possible responses in this way:

1. If you are a baptized believer, examine yourself, repent, and come to the Table.
2. If you are a believer who has not yet been baptized, do not participate yet. Instead, speak with one of the elders after service about being baptized.
3. If you are not a Christian, do not come to the Table; instead, go to Christ in prayer. Repent, believe, and be forgiven in Him.

The Lord’s Supper provides that kind of biblically grounded and pastorally gentle call to repentance each week.

Baptism as a Call to Repent

The only time we do not observe the Lord’s Supper is whenever we celebrate the other ordinance: baptism. But baptism is also a call to repentance. It publicly displays what repentance and faith looks like, proclaiming the gospel to every onlooker.

Often, unbelieving family members attend a baptism. They see the testimony. They hear the gospel. They witness their loved one publicly identifying with Christ. Thus, baptism should also be a call to repentance.

Conclusion

In the end, altar calls attempt to accomplish something that the ordinances already do. Christ has given His church two powerful, visible calls to repentance. We do not need to invent others.

My pastoral counsel, then, is this: lay aside altar calls, and embrace what Christ Himself has ordained. Use the Lord’s Supper and baptism to call everyone to repentance, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Christ has given us everything we need.

Let the ordinances do the work they were intended to do.