An Alternative To The Sinner's Prayer In Evangelism

Not speaking Spanish at that time, leaders partnered me with a bilingual translator as we embarked on sharing the gospel in what seemed to be an unreached area of Buenos Aires. This was just the first few weeks of a relationship with Argentina that would span ten years. This first evangelistic encounter was a coordinated effort by a local group to reach people with the gospel. It was a commendable effort, and I was grateful to be part of it. However, it led to an unexpected confrontation within my own convictions that I had not encountered before.

Walking through the streets, we encountered a young girl who was probably about twelve. As we began to share with her, this little girl showed interest. After about five minutes, I began to ask some clarifying questions, to which the translator stopped me and said, “No, no. She’s ready to pray the prayer, so let’s pray.” Though trying to explain that I was trying to gauge her understanding, the translator insisted. So, we finally prayed what we refer to as the sinner’s prayer. Afterward, I asked more questions, and it was clear that she hadn't understood even the basic tenets of the gospel. She had no understanding of her sin or a need for a Savior. Walking away, I lamented that we had just given this young girl a false hope. I now had to contend with something and concluded, “If this is evangelism, then I think we are doing something wrong, and there has to be a better way.”

If you don’t know, professing Christians point to the sinner’s prayer in evangelism when someone prays “to accept Jesus into their heart.” Usually, it occurs after someone has shared elements of the gospel with someone and then asks whether that person wants to receive God’s forgiveness through Christ. If the person affirms this, then the evangelist shares a boilerplate prayer of repentance and acceptance of Christ, asking the person to repeat after them. When the prayer has been said, the person is congratulated and “welcomed into the family of God.”

Since that moment in Argentina, this practice has concerned me and continues to do so. It worries me for two related reasons. First, it reduces salvation to a prayer rather than faith. I don't believe these were the intentions, and it would be unfair at this point to criticize those who initially propagated this as being unfaithful or pragmatic. I suspect that the intentions were honorable. For today though, the experience I shared in my life is common. It makes the goal of evangelism to get the person to respond by agreeing to pray. I suspect this gets pushed more and more because it’s a method to analyze “success” in evangelism since we can’t measure the heart. Prayer, though, is an outworking of faith, not an initiator of faith, and this seems to confuse the two.

This reality leads to a second concern, one that I already noted above. I’m afraid that the sinner’s prayer becomes a form of false assurance. It’s common to ask someone for their testimony these days, and the response is to pinpoint their salvation to that prayer. It makes little mention of conviction, repentance, faith, or sanctification. A new believer hardly recognizes those words and probably doesn't recognize fully the effect of the Lord’s grace in those moments. However, they can usually articulate some sort of story that suggests those, even by a short phrase like, “I was lost, but now I am found!” By tracing salvation to the sinner’s prayer, we have to question, “Is that person trusting in the prayer or trusting in faith?” I think that’s a legitimate question.
With those concerns in mind, how do we engage in evangelism and call on someone to faith and repentance in a biblical way? How do we share with people in a way that exalts Christ’s work and doesn’t give a false assurance? I think Christ provides us with the answer: it’s called the Great Commission.

We know of the Great Commission from Christ’s declaration in Matthew 28:19-20 when He commissions His followers to go out and make disciples. The components of making disciples are explained to us in that text, noted as teaching all things and baptizing people. If someone expresses interest, the response is not, “Say this prayer.” Instead, a better response is, “Great! Let me teach you.” The Word of the Lord is powerful and capable of sanctification (cf. John 17:17); therefore, we bring them to the Word and let it do the work. Over time, their heart will be revealed as they are either transformed by the Word or conformed to the world (cf. Romans 12:2). The beauty of this is that their assurance is not in a prayer, nor our declaration of their salvation, but rather it will be confirmed by God’s Word. After all, John tells us that these things were written so that a person may know that they have eternal life (1 John 5:13).

Our God is both perfect and wise, and so it is necessary for us to trust that all of His ways are a manifestation of that perfection and wisdom. The Great Commission falls under this category. If the Lord deems the Great Commission as the means for propagating His truth and bringing people to Him, then we must trust that this plan of making disciples is also wise and perfect.