How is Your Soul-Count Coming?

The Baptists gave me my first assignment when I became a Christian at around 8 years old. I remember a preacher with a “wiggly” voice saying, “What will you do when you arrive at God’s throne and have no souls to lay before Him at His feet?”

I remember thinking, oh no! I don’t have any. I need to get some. My quest for souls began. The problem was that I couldn’t find any. That’s not to say that there weren’t any—I just couldn’t find them. There were plenty of bad girls and bad boys in school, but to them I was a prude, which rendered me incapable of influencing them for Christ. They thought I led a sheltered life. I didn’t “drink, smoke, cuss or chew or even go with boys who do”-or did.

I grew up during the Billy Graham Crusade era. If you couldn’t pray the prayer with enough souls, you needed to bring your unsaved friends to a Billy Graham Crusade. The conviction of the Holy Spirit was powerful at those. The resistance of your unsaved friend would likely collapse there. I tried to round up people, but I don’t think it worked. I passed through childhood and teen years and still had not one soul to lay at Jesus’ feet.

In the ‘70’s when I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, I thought that surely this would make a difference in the soul-count. One day, my friend Mary Ann Brown and I decided to increase the count and go door-to-door witnessing. Why should only the cults like Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses reap the harvest behind the closed doors in my neighborhood?

Mary and I brushed up on our techniques largely gleaned from all the emphasis we learned in Evangelism Explosion and witnessing techniques that preachers taught us from the pulpit in the Baptist church. We donned our long skirts, wadded our Bibles under our arms and began to stalk victims who were doing things on Saturday afternoon like washing their cars and watching TV.

My nerves were on edge as I stepped onto each porch. Who was behind the door and how would the react? I gulped down my reservations and bravely knocked. I wrestled with the fear of man, which manifested in the wistful hope that no one was home. I didn’t want to hear the sound of footsteps coming to the door, and I didn’t want Mary Ann to see me trembling. What would she think and what would the hapless victim think?

I don’t think our soul count grew. I believe we did manipulate a few people into saying “yes” to all our questions and who allowed us pray a rote prayer with them. We were excited while they closed the door and went back to their favorite TV programs. I never saw what looked to be the slightest ounce of conviction on anyone’s face; but at least we had done our duty to tell them. Now they would have no excuse when they stood before God’s throne. We were sure that when they did, God would remind them, “Remember those two ladies in the long skirts that one Saturday afternoon…?” as he cast them into outer darkness.

That relieved me for a while. Perhaps I really did have some souls to lay at Jesus’ feet, but was the number enough? I wondered if other people felt as I did and what they did to achieve their soul counts. The teachers of all the soul-winning techniques had notches on their Bibles like gunslingers had on their guns whenever they killed an outlaw. Some of them had cards filled out with hundreds of names. These people had prayed the sinner’s prayer with them. My pathetic little life didn’t have that kind of impact on the lost, but I sincerely wanted it to. I felt like was failing Jesus because I wasn’t very good at this. I couldn’t “close the deal,” and no one every fell under conviction of sin as I passed by them on the street. I was sure that I would enter heaven’s gates without the souls I needed to warrant the approval of Jesus, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. You don’t have quite as many as Billy Graham, but you have an Honorable Mention.”

My stint as a conference speaker wasn’t all that much better, either. I couldn’t give good altar calls. One time I did all I knew to do. I posed the eternal question,
“Smoking or non-smoking?” People laughed; but once again, I had no souls to lay at Jesus’ feet.

I asked John Arnott one day how he did it. He has an incredible talent, or anointing, for getting people to come forward at altar calls. Who wouldn’t come to Jesus if a giant teddy bear asked you to? He patiently tried to explain how to do it. I still didn’t seem to get it. My soul count to this day is very low. If you have a solution for me, please send an e-mail or a text. I’m getting older by the minute and fear that I will not even get enough souls to show Jesus how much He means to me.

 How you respond to what I need to say in this blog depends entirely on how you believe someone reaches the point of salvation. Does everyone need to pray the sinner’s prayer to reach the Kingdom of Heaven?

I’m not so sure any more. C.S. Lewis did not enter the Kingdom of Heaven by praying the sinner’s prayer. He was originally a big-time atheist, challenging the most brilliant minds of the church on radio in Britain. He was a professor at Oxford.

One day as he was reflecting on the whole matter while riding through the English countryside, he said that he knew the exact moment when the faith to believe plopped into his heart. It was as though he entered a door. He could recall not believing and then suddenly believing. He became one of the greatest apologists for the Christian faith and one of the most prolific twentieth century authors of allegories and satires that illustrate the Gospel. He even made the high school literature book in the U.S. He was a radio favorite in his day among Christians because he could argue the faith with his former atheistic colleagues and disarm them. Great Britain was his audience. The BBC carried his debates live.

I don’t know, though. He may not have been truly saved because he forgot that he needed to pray the sinner’s prayer.

Since I am not very good at “closing the deal,” I do the next best thing. I just talk to people about what Jesus has done for me. Perhaps it’s just to assuage my conscience because I have a low soul count, but I’ve come to believe that God has a bigger role than we have imagined in any person’s salvation. He is the author of it, the one who draws a man to Himself.  He is the one who gives the faith to believe. The origin of salvation is supernatural. Regardless of how many cards you can present at the feet of Jesus filled out by people at the altar, you had very little to do with it.

Our responsibility is to give an answer to everyone who asks for the hope we have. We can preach the gospel of Jesus and cause people to hear of Him. It is far better if that message does not come wrapped in pleas for money or donations to your TV ministry. People will likely think that you have a hidden motive and that you care more about that than you do about Jesus.

I’ve always enjoyed how Billy Graham does it. He uses TV and does not let TV use him by placing himself in the awful place of having to raise funds to keep the program going. He goes on TV temporarily to air a crusade, and then goes off. He does not allow the religious monster to trap him. He is growing old now and doesn’t have crusades, but I heard him the other night on the air preaching at a crusade from 1957. It was so refreshing to hear the pure, simple gospel of Jesus followed by the invitation to receive Him. I wanted to “go forward,” and I’ve been a Christian since 1957! Let’s just cancel everything else and fund the reruns of old Billy Graham Crusades.

The accidental intercessor doesn’t have to go door-to-door witnessing to strangers or be on TV. As God opens doors in front of you, respond to the opportunity. You may be the link in a very long chain of influence which exposes the one God is calling to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A person can believe in the heart without you having to “close the deal.” This belief will precede any “confession of the mouth.” It is OK to pray the sinner’s prayer, but it is not necessary to declare salvation and notch your Bible. They will declare it, if it was real.