More On Decisional Regeneration

Video by Mark Kielar, the founder of CrossTV and creator of the Word Pictures series. Additionally, he hosts many of the Word Pictures programs. CrossTV, a religious programming company produces the Word Pictures series, a collection of over 40 videos addressing Biblical and Christian concepts, theology and issues. He is currently serving as pastor / teaching elder at First Baptist Church of Boynton Beach, Florida.

Link to "Decisional Regeneration" video here.

'Decisions For Christ' - The Measure of Success?
by Jim Bublitz of Old Truth

Trophies for "decisions" are imaginative to say the least, but they would be iconic of the popular mindset in evangelism. Churches and ministries today are doing outreach differently than in the past, and they are looking for validation of their new techniques. Decision-counts have become the standard unit of measure for quantifying God's blessing on: evangelism techniques, leadership methods, and sermon content. In this posting, we'll explore the claims, concept, and counting of "decisions for Christ".

Within a few days of the annual Christmas musicals this last year, church-blogs everywhere began to light-up with claims of success. So often however, I noticed that "success" was being defined mathematically; here's an example of one church who reported 72 decisions for Christ that night. But it's not just a Christmas phenomenon; these conversion-reports are wide-spread in evangelicalism today. Here are some more examples:

• A pastor of one seeker sensitive church claimed 1,879 decisions in a single year. Being enamored with these 'results', he declared: "There have not been in all of church history that many churchesthat have touched as many lives", unquote.
• Another pastor preached a sermon on "Your Best Life Now" (apparently based on Joel Osteen's book), and said afterwards - this produced many decisions for Christ.
• One pragmatic pastor who offers input on my blog occasionally, insists that all of this represents a great modern revival. Here are some more examples:
• A basketball ministry that claims 6,000 decisions in one year.
• There's a Superbowl outreach that produced 1,200 decisions.
• A movie that led to 2,300 decisions in one weekend.
• The Power Team even makes conversion predictions ahead of time.

The most dramatic example I've seen, is the account of one man, who was said to have influenced over one million decisions for Christ in his lifetime. That's Bill Bright. And we are told that a movie that he created lead to more than 200 million decisions.

Let's bring an historical element into this discussion. I'm amazed at how long some of history's greatest missionaries waited before seeing their very first convert. Why didn't they quit in discouragement, and how many of today's pragmatic pastors would have been willing to wait this long?:

• William Carey was in India for seven years before he baptized his first convert.
• David Livingstone served eight years in Africa before seeing anyone converted.
• Adoniram Judson in Burma, six years.
• Hudson Taylor in China, waited ten years!

Now with that bit of information from church history in mind, consider some of these claims:

• A group of students on one recent missionary excursion in Buenos Aires claimed 1,477 decisions in a single day.
• Another missionary trip saw thousands of decisions for Christ in a single week.

How can we explain the fact that a group of students ended up being radically more effective in initial outreach than the most well-known missionaries in church history? Were the missionaries of the past simply not smart enough to come up with innovative and culturally relevant outreach techniques? Could it be that there is really some massive revival going on today, that wasn't going on during the greatest century of missions? The more likely explanation is that Christian ministers of past centuries looked at lasting conversions, where as today - the short-sighted focus is on counting immediate "decisions".

Going back in church history, we see a more discerning attitude, that resisted making immediate conversion claims. George Whitefield, who was a leader in the 18th century Great Awakening, made it a practice to delay judgment until months or years down the road. Whitefield's reasoning for this was, you simply can't know right away. He said:

There are so many stony ground hearers, who receive the Word with joy, that I have determined to suspend my judgment till I know the tree by its fruits. I cannot believe they are converts till I see fruit brought back; it will never do a sincere soul any harm".

A century later, Charles Spurgeon was also very outspoken against potentially boastful and self-validating conversion claims, saying:

"Do not, therefore, consider that soul-winning is or can be secured by the multiplication of baptisms, and the swelling of the size of your church. What mean these dispatches from the battle-field? "Last night, 14 souls were under conviction, 15 were justified, and 8 received full sanctification". I am weary of this public bragging, this counting of unhatched chickens, this exhibition of doubtful spoils. Lay aside such numberings of the people, such idle pretence of certifying in half a minute that which will need the testing of a lifetime". [read more]

He had the same common-sense that Whitefield had a century earlier. It's a common-sense that seems to be very much lacking today:

"It very often happens that the converts that are born in excitement die when the excitement is over". [Continue reading ...]