How are people “getting saved” today?

I’ve been thinking about how the way people “get saved” has changed several times in my lifetime, especially in my denomination, The Wesleyan Church.

Altar call evangelism—1970’s

In the 1970's the unsaved were called “lost” and they “got saved” in church evangelistic services. IN these services there was a an “evangelistic sermon” followed by an “altar call” where the unsaved were called to repentance by urging them to “come forward” to the altar.

Many did. They got “under conviction” and after multiple verses of songs like “Just as I am” or “Pass me not” and eventually “broke” rushing forward in tears to kneel and repent of their sins pleading with God to forgive them. Hey then stayed pleading until the end of the “altar service” while other Christians gathered around them, often praying aloud pleading with God to forgive the seeker. When the sinner “prayed through” they were expected to stand up and “testify” to salvation to “seal the work.”

Door to door evangelism—1980’s

But all this changed in the 1980's for most churches in my denomination. A program called GRADE was sweeping across the church promoted by John Maxwell. In the 1980’s John Maxwell was not yet a leadership guru… he was still an evangelism guru. We were told it was time to move evangelism out of the church and into the streets. The old altar call model seemed outdated since few unsaved people actually attended church. The new method to do evangelism was to go door to door where teams of trained “Andrews” could “share the gospel” and lead the person to “make a decision for Christ” by leading them in “praying the prayer” of confession. Following the conversion of this person in their home, the team then tried to get the newborn Christian to come to church and “walk the aisle” as a testimony to their newfound relationship with Christ. And this new convert was then linked up with a one-to-one discipler (called a “Timothy”) to help them grow and develop the habits of Christian living.

Attraction evangelism—1990s+

Within a decade this new GRADE method of evangelism had quietly faded away. Soul winners were no longer trained and the little booklets like the Four Spiritual Laws. The new craze was “leadership” and churches were told, “Everything rises or falls on leadership.” By the mid 1990s many churches had moved to attraction evangelism. In this approach, the church offered worship services and programs attractive to the unchurched hoping to attract them into the church. The term “lost” was exchanged for unchurched and the term “saved” virtually disappeared. Assimilation or outreach replaced evangelism and instantaneous conversion began to be replaced with a gradual conversion model.

So, how are people getting saved today?

Here we are in 2010. How are people being brought into the kingdom today? Are you using some or all of the above methods? Does your denomination have a similar changing pattern? Are any old ones returning? What are the new ways people are getting saved in your church? Do you see gradual conversion s happening more? What ways don’t work for you... and which ways are working?

So, what do you think?

The discussion of this column is on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=161502633

Keith Drury October 5, 2010

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