Decision Time

Old school churches called it the altar call. Church plants call it response time. At my youth group growing up, we called it decision time.

It was the moment at the end of the service where the youth pastor/ celebrity guest speaker/ local legend magician wrapped it all up with the Gospel and gave the students a chance to respond to it in some way. This was done in a few different ways…

the hand raise: for this, students are asked to silently raise their hands incognito while the other students have their heads bowed and eyes closed; the most common approach

the look up: similar to the hand raise, the speaker instead asks the responders to look up at him and make eye contact with him; the speaker usually confirms eye contact with a wink or salute

the stand up: much more rare than the first two, this requires the student to stand where they are; usually it is set up by the speaker saying “this is a bold spiritual step, so I’m going to ask you to do something bold…”

the call out: only saw this one done once, but it was about as comfortable as a pysch ward; here, the speaker asked the responders to audibly shout out from their seats with a “here”, “amen”, or “me”; ends up sounding like a little choir of insecure voices half whispering yells out loud; usually took some milking for this to work


(CAUTION!!!)

Whatever approach you choose, there is one thing that is important: never let the non-responders open their eyes!!! Do whatever you can to make sure the other students can’t see how successful (or unsuccessful) you were during the decision time and the amount of responses you actually had because of your message. This is crucial. Don’t be afraid to call students out of their eyes are closed. If necessary, make the students lie on the floor with their faces on the ground, muttering latin prayers. Or use blindfolds.*

*If no students respond, still say “I see you over there” and “I see you in the back” every few seconds so students feel like they won’t be the only student responding. The last thing you want is for students to think you are unsuccessful. It's all about job security.