Do you regularly pray with people to receive the Lord at the close of your services? A growing number of pastors do not. I think they would be better off if they changed their practice.

Recently, I spoke in a church in Nancy, France. It was a Sunday morning worship celebration. It was also the finale to three days of seminars on how to operate MiniChurches or cell groups in local churches. Many in the audience were pastors from France, Germany and even The Ivory Coast. I closed the message with a simple prayer for the congregation—all of whom were very responsive to my words about life in an effective church.

After that prayer, the Holy Spirit seemed to nudge me to pray with anyone in the audience who wanted to receive Christ. I did and four people responded. I was left in deep shock. My very wrong assumption had been that everyone present was a born-again Christian. The second assumption was equally misleading: that no one would get saved after a message about the power of God at work among committed Christians. I underestimated the power of the scriptures to bring life—all the scriptures.

Here are three questions you should ask yourself with regard to altar calls:

Do you really know the hearts of your audience?
My very wrong assumption was that everyone was a believer. You may see the same faces week after week. Yet, you don’t know if they really know the Lord. You will never know unless you ask every person. The only way to do that is to ask them when you have them together in one place at a time. I recently watched a five-year attender who volunteers in Children’s Church pray to receive Christ. Afterwards, his life radically changed so this was no prayer for reassurance—it was the real deal. He may have missed heaven if I had not lead him in that prayer.

Is any scripture “inappropriate” for salvation?
One of our best leaders visited church for the first time on a weekend when I taught about tithing. His wife prayed for nine months to get him there. She nearly fainted when I announced the scripture and subject for the morning. She was confident her husband would be turned off to the gospel forever. The exact opposite happened. He accepted Christ through a ninety-second presentation and prayer at the close of service. The following Tuesday he asked me to lunch to discuss his financial problems. They were huge—he could have even been jailed because of a business partner’s financial misdeeds. We prayed. He claimed the promises that he had heard in scripture the week before. He also began tithing the following weekend. God rescued him from the trouble and he now owns his own company. Would all that have happened if we didn’t pray with people to receive Christ after tithing sermons?

What will happen when no one gets confronted with the gospel?
If you reduce church to a format that seems completely comfortable to an un-churched individual, you will become salt without savor. If you don’t make opportunity for people to repent, where will they go to find life? If you don’t pray with your folks to receive the Lord, who will model that prayer and challenge so your members integrate it into their own faith-sharing experiences. As a pastor, you are a role model. Your words are symbols carrying hidden freight and bearing fruit beyond your direct intention. Avoiding those symbols is every bit as powerful as expressing them. Prayers uttered beat those left unspoken any day.