Does your church train for altar work?

If your church has an altar, or anything akin to it (ie a place where 'seekers' come to pray), does your church have altar workers?

Is it a free for all, where anyone can come forward and pray with the people at the altar?

Or do you have specially designated people only who are allowed to do that?

And in either case, does your church give instruction and training on how to minister 'in the altar'?

And IF so, could you describe that training? Also, has the training been effective?

[Jack Shephard]

Originally Posted by Eliseus

If your church has an altar, or anything akin to it (ie a place where 'seekers' come to pray), does your church have altar workers?

Is it a free for all, where anyone can come forward and pray with the people at the altar?

Or do you have specially designated people only who are allowed to do that?

And in either case, does your church give instruction and training on how to minister 'in the altar'?

And IF so, could you describe that training? Also, has the training been effective?

Ours is sort of a free for all. Do they have an altar workers thing....

Originally Posted by JTULLOCK

Ours is sort of a free for all. Do they have an altar workers thing....

Has your church ever taught on what to do at the altar with people?

Or is it pretty much learned by example? Trust the Spirit to lead you? That sort of thing?

[AmericanAngel]

I donno. I've never been trained...It's a free for all where I go.

I have been to some churches where there are certain persons specifly for that though.

Would you prefer to have the pastor/elder/whoever teach on altar work? Or do you think it is better to just let everyone do what do?

What improvements would you like to see in your church's altar services?

[Michael Phelps]

Originally Posted by Eliseus

Has your church ever taught on what to do at the altar with people?

Or is it pretty much learned by example? Trust the Spirit to lead you? That sort of thing?

Eli, this is an EXCELLENT topic!

When I was raised, our altars were a free for all. And, like so many other things in Pentecost, if you were raised in the church, you understood certain terms and nomenclature that seekers didn't understand.

So, we would tell them to "just let go", and someone else would say "hold on, hold on", and I"m sure the poor seeker was confused.

I've seen people lay hands on the seeker so hard they nearly broke their necks, lol. Sometimes people got the Holy Ghost IN SPITE of the altar workers, not because of their efforts.

But, on the other hand, I"ve seen people truly led of the Spirit who said just the right things at the right time to help the seeker break through.

I definitely think there needs to be training of some sort for altar workers, and I've seen some good material. Good altar workers can still be led of the spirit, but stay within certain protocol.

I'm not sure how many churches train altar workers, but in my experience, the ones that don't outnumber the ones that do.

[DanielR]

Probably, the best would be to occationally have the preacher teach the congregation about alter work, so that everyone is equiped to serve in that capacity.

Daniel

[Kutless]

My previous church held a training annually but it was more about leading people to the H.G. We were given a repentance prayer to lead them thru and then show them how to praise. Some of it was weird but I did glean from it a bit

[staysharp]

Originally Posted by Eliseus

Would you prefer to have the pastor/elder/whoever teach on altar work? Or do you think it is better to just let everyone do what do?

What improvements would you like to see in your church's altar services?

Maybe some of the "turn loose let go" folks will actually follow the leading of the Spirit!

What should the training of altar workers look like, and consist in, if such training were preferable to no training at all?