Should Churches Perform Altar Calls?

A response to the following article:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2011/11/17/you-asked-should-churches-perform-altar-calls/

The following article states some resaons on why chruches should not perform alter calls at the end of church services. While, the article has some good reasons, I still have to disagree.

The author's main reason for not providing an alter call is due to the reason that:

"So why wouldn't I give an altar call? In short, I believe that this particular man-made practice, this 19th-century innovation, has produced more bad than good for Christian churches in the West. The altar call relies on the powers of emotion, rhetorical persuasion, and social pressure to induce people to make a hasty and premature decision. And producing professions is not the same thing as making disciples. Surely a number of factors are responsible for the many nominal Christians that typify Christianity in the West, but I believe that the altar call is one of them."

Now to a degree, I agree with him. However, there numerous people that attend church every week, and if not asked will not act. I agree that I don't think that churches should be conducting hour long alter calls, and drawing out the act with elaborate music. 

Having said that, what is a sermon without the call to follow christ. What is a sermon, that doesn't give people the opportunity to speak with someone on how to repent from their sins and follow Christ as their Lord and savior.

The alter call is all about giving people the opportunity to make a decesion to follow christ, and to provide support from fellow christians to do so. It is not about weather or not a person really does make that decesion and becomes born again.

That my friends, is only by the grace of God and a decesion that each and everyone of us can only make on our own.