Crossing the line


Be prepared this might turn into a bit of a rant. I hope it won't be too long and that you will read it to the end.

I don't know about you but I grew up on stories of people who heard the gospel in an army open air meeting, knelt at the drum drunk and got up sober. I grew up in the Billy Graham era of mass rallies where people came forward or raised a hand to make a decision to commit to Christ.

There is nothing wrong with that but I kind of had it in my head that people who were not believers would have enough to go on to make a decision for Christ if the gospel was presented clearly enough just once or twice. Everyone was in my eyes just one step away from the kingdom.

These days of course I have learned all about the Engel scale, which recognises that there is often a process that happens to most people before they commit their lives to Christ and receive salvation. In the west at least we have become a more secular society and people have many more hurdles to jump to get to the place where they are even asking how they can be put right with God. Mark Mittelberg in his book Building a Contagious Church talks about secular men and women who "don't hear one good sermon, read one solid Christian book, have one spiritual conversation or go to one knock out seeker event and then decide on the spot to repent of their sins or turn their lives to God." I was helped also by reading The Successful Soul Winner by Finney and realised I had made the mistake that he points out in it.
"Revivals are often injured by treating awakened sinners as though convicted and saying , repent, submit when they are not yet convinced of their guilt and don't know what real submission means."

I believe that this teaching about the process leading to salvation has been and continues to be a very important thing in recognising what kind of approach is the best one in reaching a lot of the people we are trying to win for the Kingdom. Of course God works sovereignly but it is wise to learn from our dealings with people. I also think it was a breakthrough when we started to think about letting people positively experience Chrstian community before they sorted out their belief system and modified their behaviour. Expecting people to change before they are allowed our door is a barrier that still has to come down in many places.

But, there always has to be a but doesn't there? I have a worry about all this. I am beginning to hear in evangelical circles that we need to get away from the put your hand up or tick a box kind of decision making element in our evangelism.
I agree that sometimes that has been done very badly and with maniuplation.
But when I also hear things like, "Who are we to say when person becomes a Christian? Is is not too simplistic to say that there is an invisible line that people cross over and one day they are not a Christian and the next moment they are? I heard a well known evangelical say not long ago that Jesus only spoke about being born again once but called people to follow him many times and that we are too obsessed with the being born again thing. I have heard it said that we have made becoming a Christian too much of a religous ABC formula whilst God is not interested in our religion only our relationship with him.

There are elements of truth in all of that stuff but I have really loud alarm bells ringing in my head. I recognise that there is a process involved before we become a Christian butI firmly believe that there are decisions to make, a submission to give and an experience to claim. I still believe in conversion despite the fact that I can't remember a time in my life when Jesus wasn't a reality to me and my going to the mercy seat on a decision Sunday was probably the outward confession of something already done in my heart.
Are we not either dead in our sins or alive to Christ? Are we not either lost or found, blind or seeing? Are we not God's enemies or his friends, aliens and strangers or adopted sons or daughters?

We have had the crisis/process debate about holiness for years with the process proponents mostly holding sway. All I can say is I didn't grow into any blessing. I was challenged, repented, submitted, committed and received freedom and power that I had never experienced before and still continue to know.

Now it seems that we are having a similar debate about salvation which alarming.

Did the squeezing out of the Brengle style claiming of the blessing of holiness to make way for the Coutts style growth in holiness leave us open to thinking that we can grow into salvation too?

I don't know but we need "all on the altar" believers and I can't help thinking that this is another ploy of the enemy to have a church full of floating voters.