Places matter. They accrue meaning as we do meaningful things in them, but also they are better or worse for different things.
I’d like to consider ‘response times,’ by which I mean the part of your Sunday meeting where people are invited to respond to preaching or prophecy and then are prayed for by someone else in the congregation. These can have a variety of different looks and expressions, but all charismatic churches have them. Plenty of non-charismatic churches have them too, though they don’t call them that.
The question I’d like to tackle is whether there is a better ‘place’ for them. Really what I mean by that is that viewed through the lens of a theology of place is it a good idea to get people to come to the front for your ‘altar call?’
The answer, to cut the meandering off at the knees, is simple enough: it depends.
To explore different types of response we have to think what a particular set of places and actions are fitted for. The front of your Sunday meeting, which is probably not the largest space is visible. This visibility makes the barrier to responding as high as possible which is good when you want to call people to be visibly counted and bad when you want to not break bruised reeds.
We can imagine a variety of different responses ranging from walk to the front, to walk to the back, to come to the front after the end of the meeting, through to responding where you are either to corporate prayer or to having someone nearby pray for you, through to getting in touch in the week to arrange something. Different amounts of visibility are going to be appropriate for different responses. Do challenge your people, but don’t expose them. To take extreme examples, a response about sexual abuse should not be exposing (and probably isn’t that wise to make public at all) whereas a response to ‘go to the nations’ if its meaningful and not youthful fervour is going to require a visible response.
The second angle to consider is time. Coming to the front of the meeting is going to be a brief thing. The meeting is soon to end, you may be stood in an aisle that people need to move through, you might need to get your kids from their groups, you probably want to go and get a coffee. This sort of response is not for extended counselling but to pray and minister the Spirit to people. It’s not typically a good time to cast out demons, it’s not a good time for lengthy and complex prayer sessions, but it can helpfully seal something for people as they respond.
The third angle to consider is the number of people who might respond. The lower the number of people the more likely you are to do a ‘come to the front’ response. That seems counterintuitive, but if half the people need to respond don’t ask them to come out the front. At least half of them won’t; you’d do better to invite everyone to respond where they are while you pray for them, then giving an additional opportunity to seal something in prayer, perhaps with those near them.
The fourth angle to consider is the hands, or ‘who will do the praying?’ All of your congregation should know how to pray for someone in this sort of situation but they probably don’t feel confident in it. Most of them won’t come to the front to join in a response time, which can lead to the perception that the ‘special Christians’ pray for you at the front. This is a good reason to not do this sort of response all the time.
Other kinds of responses use other people’s hands. “Raise your hand if you’d like to be prayed for, just look around and pray for those near you,” can be an approach that involves lots more people in praying and helps the church embody the truth that they’re all priests and that the body does the body’s work. Equally, you sometimes might only want confident, or even trained, people to pray for others, in which case a more select response might work better.
The fifth and final angle is pressure. The spectrum of responses also involves a spectrum of pressure, on both the leader and the congregation. The more visible the response, the more pressure there is. That can be good if you’re trying to create a moment, though be wary of the potential here for manipulation. It becomes more tempting to manipulate the higher the pressure is on you: no one responding tends to make the leader want to do something. In turn, for the people responding, frequent pressure can make people feel like they’re supposed to have problems every week and only being prayed for in church can work for them.
In summary: different ‘places’ and types of response are better fitted to different things. Try and think it through a bit, though much of this is about a judgement call and will depend on specifics like your own building’s fabric and nature. If you do the same thing all the time, switch it up: do something lower key if you’re high pressure, do something more direct if your response times are brief and vague.
Whatever you do remember that the Lord Jesus wants to meet his people in word, spirit, and sacrament, and will do so whatever you do. You’re trying to help people attend to his presence in the way that’s more conducive to an encounter with God.
Photo by GeoJango Maps on Unsplash
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