How Common Is It to Give an Altar Call without…

How Common Is It to Give an Altar Call without Preaching the Gospel?

It grieves me to say this, but it seems to me that the norm in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches is to give altar calls without explaining the Gospel. My question is this, how often does this happen in the Church of God denomination?

In many churches, Assemblies of God, Foursquare, etc. the pastor will give an altar call and have people repeat a prayer. I know some Pentecostals in the Southeast don’t do the ‘repeat after me’ prayer approach at an altar call. I saw it quite a bit in Gereja Bethel Indonesia, which is the Indonesian group within the COG.

It grieves me to see that so many professing Christians, preachers even, seem to think that someone is saved by repeating a prayer after the preacher, when he hasn’t even told the audience that Jesus died on the cross for their sins and rose again from the dead.

If you do not believe me, pay attention to sermons. Pay attention to whether the cross is explained. Has the preacher explained who God is, what sin is, who Jesus is, that Christ died for our sins, and that He rose again from the dead.

Believing that Jesus died on the cross is not enough. Caiaphas believed that.

Here is a brief summary of the Gospel.
I Corinthians 15
1 Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve.
(NKJV)