Repeat After Me…
Due to several things that I won’t go into here, the church that Becky and I attend has disbanded. So, we are visiting other churches looking for God’s will in where we ought to go. This visiting has gotten me to think about how certain things are handled, and whether the way they are handled is Biblical or not. One thing specifically came to mind at a church I visited a few years ago for a play.
I don’t recall much detail about the play itself other than it showcased several examples of people, young and old, and everywhere in between. It showed their lives and whether or not they had accepted Christ. They had a nice big stairway that led up to the gates of Heaven – I don’t remember how Hell was portrayed, but it was there as well for those who never repented.
The play was organized and directed by some company that the church hired. After the play, an employee of this company (I’m assuming the director of the play itself) stood on stage and gave the gospel in a nutshell. After that, he proceeded to call all of the youth to the front of the church. He then led a mass ‘repeat after me feel-good prayer’ and declared all of them saved.
It would be great to be able to believe they all repented and received Christ as their Savior that night, but unfortunately it is not the case. On the contrary, that man probably made most of them a two-fold child of Hell. Simply because a lot of them went forward because their friends did, and others because a lot had already gone forward and it was the popular thing to do at the time. For the rest of their lives, they’ll bet their eternal existence on that experience.
