If you grew up Pentecostal, altar calls were a regular part of your life. I can personally attest to that fact. I was the son of Pentecostal parents, attending a Pentecostal church and traveling frequently with my Pentecostal preacher father to camp meetings, revivals, and big church meetings, where I was obliged to stay in my seat from the opening prayer to the final “amen.” So, I learned about altar calls early in life.
As an adult, I’ve spent almost all my life at Lee University, where Pentecostal worship is a normal occurrence, usually in chapel services where altar calls are part of the campus DNA. Lee students, literally tens of thousands of them, have left their seats to pour into the altar—whether in Conn Center in recent decades or in an earlier generation in a place we now call the “old auditorium,” which was bulldozed in the late 1980s.
At my home church, as a boy, we stood for congregational singing, sat for the special music, sat for the sermon, and then stood again for the altar call. Even after a long sermon, the altar call could go on for an extended period. It was at the end of a long service, which came at the end of a long day. Nevertheless, we stood. More than once, I heard my mischievous friends joke about going to the altar simply to get off their feet.
If one of my memories of altar calls is how long and tiring they could be, I have many other, more serious memories of altar calls when I was deeply moved—by the preaching or the singing or simply the Lord’s presence—to the point that going to the altar and pouring my heart out to God was the only response. Those times at the altar, even as a boy and teenager, weren’t just fleeting episodes; they were critical points of inflection in my life that moved me toward God.
Once, on the final night of a particularly good revival, the pastor and evangelist joined to offer a joint altar call and water baptism. The pastor was in the baptistery, standing waist-deep, waiting for an orderly line of baptism candidates to be sent his way. The evangelist was in front on the stage, exhorting the congregation, urging them to come to the altar and get saved so they could then be baptized.
The evangelist was particularly effective that night. As he pleaded with sinners to come forward, the pitch of both the music and the emotions rose higher. The spirit of conviction was heavy. Suddenly, a burly young man bolted wildly from his pew near the back and ran screaming toward the front of the church. It was electrifying. I was a young boy, watching wide-eyed from my pew, determined not to miss any of the drama.
And there was lots of drama. Running hard, by the time the sinner reached the altar area, he had apparently already felt his burden of sin lift, so he never slowed down. He ran up the church’s stairs, where the chairs had been cleared so people could see the baptistery behind. When he reached the glass in front of the baptistery, filled with water, he grabbed the top of the glass, leaped high over the obstacle, then landed cannonball-style into the pool, knocking down and nearly drowning the shocked and disbelieving pastor.
In that manner, the young man went from sinner to saved to baptized saint, all in about 20 seconds.
Maybe the biggest thing in my life as a child was Church of God youth camp, a week of bliss in the middle of July. I went to Tennessee’s youth camp for seven straight summers. I liked everything about it except the church services at night. We had services in the front few rows under the roof of an old open-air tabernacle.
There were other times, however, when I found myself personally and deeply involved in the worship, especially as I became an older teenager. I began listening to the minister, not just waiting for him to quit. And when the altar call came, I was often ready to go forward not to make someone else happy but because I needed God’s touch. At youth camp, I never felt pressure in an altar call, never felt I should go to please my parents or other adults, never afflicted with those stresses as I was back home.
It was in such a camp service that I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. I was a high school senior and had given my heart to God but struggled with going further. I think I was treating the Holy Spirit baptism as something I had to earn by doing things just the right way. I was conflicted about it, frustrated by my inability to break through.
The preacher that night was Bennie Triplett, a skillful preacher with a pastor’s heart. He gave the gentlest, most easygoing altar appeal I’ve ever heard. He quietly said something like, “For those of you who want the gift of the Holy Spirit, your gift is here. It’s already been given to you. Now all you have to do is come up here and reach out and take it.”
That was so simple. No emotional pitch, no pressure, no manipulation. Just a gentle invitation: “Your gift is here waiting.” That night, it was exactly what I needed to hear, in the way I needed to hear it. I left my wooden bench, walked straight to the altar and knelt, and with absolutely no effort, I soon heard myself being filled with the Spirit.
There wasn’t much drama that night. For almost everyone else there, that night may have been quite ordinary. I don’t know. But for me, it was a life-changing experience. I left that altar with a sense of the certainty of God’s hand on my life than I had ever felt before.
When I was a student at Lee College, I saw and participated in many altar calls. The guest preachers who came to Lee Chapel were usually talented pulpiteers, often preaching under a great anointing. Most of us in the audience were eager to experience God’s presence.
God still moves in the same way in Lee Chapel services, even in 2025. The music touches us; the Word points us toward God and the Holy Spirit; and we leave our seats and meet God in the altar. Many things have changed at Lee, but this hasn’t changed. I hope it never does.
Paul Conn, Ph.D., is the chancellor of Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee.