I visited a large COG and a guest speaker who is highly ‘ranked’ in the COG hierarchy spoke. At the end, he wanted people who wanted to surrender to Christ repeat a prayer. The ‘call’ was not extremely specific that it was about people who needed to be save, but kind of hinted at that. I didn’t hear any references to the resurrection, and maybe a vague reference to what happened on the cross, if that, during the prayer. To some extent, I kind of wonder if preachers are responding to the expectation to have a ‘repeat the prayer’ kind of thing at the end of a sermon to satisfy those who think that is a mark of orthodoxy or if it is habit.Those who have read my posts probably know my view on this sort of thing. There are certain teachings and promises in scripture, for example, Romans 10:9-10and I Corinthians 15:-1-3 that indicate if we believe the Gospel (including Christ’s resurrection), we can be saved, and therefore in order for others to be able to partake of these promises through faith, they should hear the word preached. Paul asks how can they believe on Him of Whom they have not heard, and how can they hear without a preacher.Evangelism gets boiled down to a kind of ritual of repeating a prayer– a ritual we do not see in the Bible– and so often the actual message is truncated or omitted. I believe it is appropriate to preach a kergyma of sorts if there can be some who are uninstructed in the audience and we are trying to lead them to faith or at least direct them to where they can hear the Gospel explained.
Yes! I can’t believe Franklin continues the heresy that his father did in spending millions to share the gospel in a 60 second commercial. It would be so much better if would consult the Actscelerate theologians first! How dare he!