Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down.
I Kings 18:30 NKJV
Altar is one of those words you hear on occasion at church and simply let it pass without much reflection of thought. The word is used 455 times in both the Old and New Testaments, so it is familiar by concept, but perhaps less by actual usage. The concept of altar has some development through the scriptures and is applicable in use to Judaism, Christianity, and even “pagan” religious expressions. So, when a person says the word “altar”, you cannot automatically assume it is being defined by your religious presupposition.The word “altar” came from the Hebrew word, MIZBEAH, which translated means, “to slaughter”. The Greek uses the term, THUSIASTERION, which similarly means, “the place of sacrifice”. An altar, simply defined, is a place of sacrifice or the location to present certain offerings. It is a place where prayers are offered. I like how one put it when they said an altar is a place of “exchange, communication, consecration, and intercession”. It is a place of worship. Perhaps most notable, it is a place of encounter. An altar was a place where the divine and the human interacted. It was a cosmic crossroad where God and humanity met. It shouldn’t surprise us that the concept of altar flowed out of the Old Testament and into the New. One of Jesus’ greatest rebukes to the religious leaders stemmed from their misuse and misunderstanding of the altar (Matthew 23:17-19).
There are not only various applications of altars in the Bible, but altars have been defined various ways throughout church history.
I grew up in Methodism before I was born-again in a Nazarene Church my first year of college. Altars reflected different things in those two traditions, as it would in numerous Christian traditions. For Methodists, the altar tended to indicate the large wooden or golden table setting at the front below the raised pulpit which held the communion elements. The “fence” with kneeling cushions flowing from the altar around the platform was called the altar or “communion” rail. It was chest high and could easily be used to rest your elbows as you knelt and received the communion elements. For Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and many liturgical “high” churches, the altar tends to be an inaccessible place of access for the people as the priest and those designated tend to the Eucharist on the altar as it is the literal body and blood of the Lord Jesus. In these churches a person may approach the altar area (usually standing) and receive the Eucharist, but never actually touch the altar. For most non-denominational churches, the altar has become synonymous to the open area at the front of the stage and there is no specific piece of furniture or railing to depict a special location. It is used for various purposes which might include communion, a response to a sermon, a place of worship, or a place to receive prayer. In these instances (with exceptions, of course), the people are usually standing to participate in the ministry taking place.
I have taken the time to quickly sketch the backgrounds of altars because I had the opportunity recently to be in a Nazarene Church service, the group which God used to reach my soul. It has been years (33+) since I had been in a Church of the Nazarene worship service, and I was delightfully reminded of their altars. Their altars, which certainly contain elements of Methodism, are also reflective of the merger between 18th century “mourners’ benches” (sometimes referred to as “anxious seats”) and the campmeeting altars of the 19thcentury revivalists (i.e. Charles Finney).
In the 18th century a mourner’s bench was an actual pew that people would sit in during the worship service. If you were in this area of seating, it was your indicator that you were under deep conviction by the Holy Spirit and were “anxious” to be prayed for and deal with your sins. The assumption was that repentance was imminent and you were on the brink of “mourning” or exercising “godly sorrow” (2 Corinthians 7:10) over your sins. As time proceeded, mourner’s benches were “turned around” to face the congregation and became the altars for those who heard the message, came under conviction, and then responded by moving forward to kneel at the bench to do business with God (so to speak). This is the historical context by which Nazarene’s developed their altars.
A Nazarene altar resembles a communion rail, but it’s much lower in height and wider in width. If a person kneels at this altar, it will hit them about midsection of their body and would allow a person to literally lay on the altar because of its width. People could gather on either side of the altar where counsel, prayer, and agreement may take place in order that the person seeking God might find that divine encounter. In most instances, these altars were used for pre-service prayer times and most often, as the location for prayer for any person responding to the invitation after the message. This is what Nazarenes referred to as the “altar call”. For better or worse, I can remember, while attending Nazarene Theological Seminary in the mid-1980’s”, a section of the evangelism class was dedicated to proficiency in giving the altar call.
Now I know at this point an interesting theological conversation with my Presbyterian / Calvinist / Reformed friends who might quickly disagree with the validity of having such an “altar call” could ensue. Believe me, these conversations took place through the decades as to whether the invitation was a valid ministry moment to the efficacy of Scripture alone or a tacit indicator of its insufficiency and a demeaning of grace to “add” something man-made to the power of the Word. Much like freedom v. sovereignty, I won’t attempt to solve in a blog a centuries old discussion.
However, as I personally looked at those Nazarene altars, a flood of memories washed over my soul and ignited in my mind…
It was 1978 and I was an 18-year-old dead man. Dead in my trespasses and sin. I was lost, despite having attended a Methodist Church since my birth. The saddest part is the realization for most all those years I didn’t know I was lost. I thought I was generally “good” with God because I attended church at least somewhat regularly and there were a host of friends and neighbors I could point to that were morally much worse than I. I was the typical works righteousness “Christian” who leaned on his attendance pins and trusted his own moral compass to be enough to satisfy a God I had created in my own mind. I was about to get a rude awakening to my self-righteousness.
Since the little town of Olathe, Kansas, was dominated by a Nazarene College and accompanying local Nazarene Church, it was no surprise that high school interactions with Nazarene kids was inevitable. I met a Nazarene young lady (not my wife, that is a story for another time) whose father was a religion professor at the college, and it was expected of me to go to church at least once a week with her if I was to date her. At that time there were 3 options of services: Sunday morning, Sunday night, or Wednesday night. Sunday morning was out of the question because Saturday nights always lasted too late. Wednesday night was out as well because of sports practices at school. Therefore, my only option was Sunday night service at the Nazarene Church.
Sunday nights were often called, “The Evangelistic Service”. The services were more spontaneous, less structured, and ALWAYS included an “altar call”. After 6 months of attendance, I had the altar calls down pat. The preacher would deliver his sermon, extend the invitation, and people would move towards the altars. There would be lots of crying, loud praying, Kleenex waving, and lots of hugs. In some ways, it was innocuous enough for me, but it wasn’t anything I could connect to. I was, as they say, too cool for such demonstrations.
But one snowy February, Sunday night, something happened…
I walked into the sanctuary and saw the guest speaker was (what they called) a General Superintendent. He was old (70’s), white-headed, and gave the vibe of a generation out of touch…at least with me. I wasn’t expecting to meet God that night. I wouldn’t have been one of those in the early Methodism seeking out the anxious seat. I was spiritually dead and honestly, unaware of any spiritual need.
But as service started that night, something began to happen in me. Unexplainably, I found myself under a sense of great guilt (I would later understand this to be conviction). I am ashamed to say that I cannot remember this man’s message, but I can remember that it was not a topic which in and of itself would arrest the attention of this 18-year-old. At the end of the message, we were invited to stand. I knew where this was headed…
The invitation…
The altar call…
I stood up internally resisting the draw I was sensing to go forward to those altars. The problem was that the internal conviction was now manifesting outwardly. My hand was shaking as I grabbed the pew in front of me. I was unaccustomed to what was taking place, but I seemed to intuitively know enough that I needed to get somewhere, where my guilt could be assuaged or addressed. As the congregation was singing, I made the decision that I would go forward to the altar. I had watched the protocol for months, so I knew to some extent what would happen. Comically, I made the inner vow to myself that I would go forward and kneel, but I was resolute that I would not cry. (Real tough guys don’t cry.) As you might expect, as I walked forward and knelt, I experienced a “two-nostril” alert. I wept. I wept hard. I wept my way to God. It wasn’t simply emotion. It was godly sorrow.
A youth minister led me in prayer and explained repentance to me. Something happened to me that was unexplainable at the time. Now I understand that I was “born from above”. I became a “new creature in Christ”. This wasn’t some phase I was going through or some emotionally charged cathartic moment. It was a complete life changing moment which is as powerful today in my memory as it was 44 years ago in experience.
And it happened at an altar…
It wasn’t the altar (piece of furniture) that produced the transformation. It was the Lord using this location to translate me from darkness to light.
What’s my point?
It’s time to repair the altar of the Lord.
I’m not talking about a piece of furniture per se… (At least, not exactly)
I am talking about a theology where we recognize and hallow a place of intercession, a place of consecration, a place of exchange, a place of encounter. We need a focal point, perhaps call it sacred space, where the people identify that this space is used for the divine and human to interact.
We need a restoration of the altar of God…
We need a manifestation of godly sorrow…
We need to present ourselves again (Romans 12:1-2) as living sacrifices…
The last 30+ years I have ministered and pastored in nondenominational settings. I have met many great people and genuine believers. Indeed, I have met some of the finest friends and colleagues in ministry imaginable. Obviously, we all come from different backgrounds, traditions, and theological distinctives. That can be a good thing, as well as a troubling thing at times.
The most troubling aspect I have wrestled with consistently over these years has been the altar. Almost without exception all of my pastoral colleagues, along with myself, give invitations at the end of our messages for various ministry reasons. The question I struggle with is whether in that invitation we have actually provided an altar? Let me explain…
I started to notice after several decades of ministry and invitations that people were responding to the invitation and simply standing there waiting for some kind of ministry. There were rarely tears and sadly, even rarer, godly sorrow. Please understand, no one has to act a certain way for it to indicate that God is at work, but there was undeniably an air of familiarity…even flippancy during the invitation (or altar) moment. It so irritated me after awhile that I simply refused to do any invitations deciding that if God was going to do a work in their lives it was on Him. (I can hear my reformed friends cheering.)
But honestly, I miss those moments at the altar.
I miss the defined and designated space of interacting with God…
I miss the corporate rumble of prayer time…
I miss the joy of watching the Holy Spirit perform the new birth…
I miss the tears, the shouts, the joy, and the transparency of the moment…
It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I like it…
And I think however that looks in your church or fellowship, it’s time we restored the altars.
It’s time that people came to church and understood there is sacred space with which we use to do business with God…
If you have read my blogs with any sense of consistency, you will see that I am not venerating my past association with a specific denomination. It has its fair share of problems too (as does every Christian organization). But I am meditating on an important moment God used in my life and again wondering if Elijah had the right idea to restore the altars in the eyes of the people to esteem and value what only God can accomplish.
Jesus could have saved me any way He wished, but He used the location of an altar.
Where’s your altar? It doesn’t have to be a mourner’s bench or a communion rail, but there is something about an altar.
Where have your tears dropped?
Where was your “come to Jesus” moment?
Has there ever been a time and place where the exchange was made? Your sins for His righteousness? Your good works for His perfect atonement?
Where was your place of consecration, intercession, and transformation?
That’s what an altar is…
Perhaps the reason the Church of the West is shrinking by every metric available is because we have lost the altar…
Perhaps the reason Church Leadership institutes and resources abound yet we are watching the collapse of the most visible of ministries and celebrity ministers is because we have lost the altars…
Perhaps the rejection of the “attractional” church model which has contributed to produce a 6% adherence to a biblical worldview of those who self-identify as “Christian” in America is because the altars are in disrepair…
And finally, according to recent studies, perhaps the reason the moral values of a Christian in America is (statistically speaking) not that much different than those who consider themselves non-Christians is because the altars need restoring…
Perhaps its time to find the altar…
Perhaps it’s time to find your altar…
Like Elijah…I’m becoming an altar fan again…
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