“So he (Abraham) built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.” (Genesis 12:7, ESV).

This story started with a text I received in mid-October. I spoke at a national men’s conference for CBMC on October 5 in St Louis and at the end of my message, I invited men to come to the front for prayer, confession, and repentance. My friend from India, Richard Samuel, offered a prayer for us. It was a much-needed step toward Jesus that some of us needed.

The following text came in the following week from one of the participants: “Thank you for your platform presentation, especially the “alter call”. “ He put ‘alter call’ in quotes, but also misspelled it.

I immediately knew that we had a new story to tell. First of all, the idea of an altar call is so rare now that we put it in quotes. As I have mentioned before in jest (but with some truth to it), I have heard more verses of “Just As I Am” than Billy Graham. In our tradition, the altar is where you go to ‘get saved’. When your dad is an evangelist, that’s the way it is. In the Old Testament, the altar was a place of holy sacrifice. Our dear Catholic brothers call the center of their Mass the altar. But for us old-fashioned Methodists, it is a place to come seeking forgiveness of sins and a new life.

In 1964, my father’s best friend, Herb Bowdoin, wrote a biography about Ford Philpot, entitled “It Took a Miracle”. Herb’s three children all showed up at my brother Danny’s funeral on November 8, which reminded me to pull the old book out of the closet. Dad was just forty-seven when his life story was told. In many ways, it was premature, with twenty-seven years and many more stories to be told. I was thirteen and Danny was eleven.

But Herb got it right when he dedicated an entire chapter to “The Altar Call”. If Ford Philpot had been a baseball pitcher, he would have been a Closer. No matter how great or mediocre the sermon was, Ford was not finished until he invited people to the altar, where trained counselors were waiting to lead them to Jesus. And Ford was always one of those counselors. He didn’t just preach and walk off the stage. He was a preacher who stayed until everyone at the altar had ‘prayed through’, an old-fashioned practice that has been forgotten. It was not uncommon for my mother to be patiently waiting (along with her two little boys Tim and Danny) while Dad finished his prayers for whoever was being ‘saved’ on that night. Indeed, looking back over fifty years, the idea of the altar call was so powerful in my childhood that my own experience with God almost had to include a powerful altar experience in 1970 at age eighteen. And I am grateful for the memories of that moment.

But my dear friend’s misspelling (“alter”) also got my attention for sure. What is the point of an altar call if people leave the altar without being altered?

Shouldn’t an experience with the living God result in a changed life? My dad’s primary word to describe the salvation that comes through Christ was being ‘converted’. When he shared his testimony of being saved at age thirty, he almost always used the word ‘converted’. I like that word because it conveys the reality that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV).
You are forever altered. An altar call really is an “alter” call- a call to come and let Jesus change you. The drunkard (like my dad at age 30) finds the power to stop drinking. The adulterer finds the desire to be faithful. The anxious finds the freedom to stop worrying. The ordinary finds the strength to be extraordinary. The prideful man finds the path to humility. The rich man finds his way through the eye of the needle. The old man finds the endurance to finish well. The lost son finds his way home. The elder brother goes to meet the younger brother and welcomes him home. I could go on and on.

So, I finish this tale with a reminder that “The Savior is Waiting”, a song that Danny and I heard a lot when we were growing up. The invitation to the altar was typically a reminder that Jesus Himself would meet you there. “The Savior is Waiting to enter your heart. Why don’t you let Him come in? There’s nothing in this world to keep you apart. What is your answer to Him? Time after time, he has waited before, and now He is waiting again, to see if you’re willing to open the door. Oh, how He wants to come in.”

I find myself humming the song in my head. And opening the door. Again. Amen.