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I am taking a class at Fuller Seminary titled, “Conversion and the Process of Change.” One of the things I have noticed in my readings (on various “famous” conversions and textbooks) and during the lectures is a reflection on how we (21st Century Evangelicals) view [tag]conversion[/tag] to [tag]Christianity[/tag]. The main model of conversion that the [tag]Evangelical[/tag] Church has adopted is that of Saul of Tarsus. He had a dramatic transformational moment on the “Road to Damascus” (where he was traveling to continue his persecution of Christians). Saul-turned-Paul has become our only model of transformation — where it has to be a sudden, dated event that one could point to and say, “That’s when I got saved.”
Our evangelism and altar-calls seem to farm for that kind of transformation. Of course, for many people, there is a specific transformational moment that brought conversion to their lives. For many others, however, it is difficult to pinpoint that one event. In fact, for many Christians (me included), there have been seasons where I had to prove my Christianity by pointing to a specific date when I became a Christian. I learned to form my “[tag]testimony[/tag]” around a single event, rather than testify of the ways God has been good to me from the day I was born.
While Saul’s conversion is a helpful paradigm, it is not the only paradigm of Biblical conversion. Calls for decisions are important and I would argue that we probably could be doing more of that (particularly through our relationships with seekers rather than through the anonymous eyes-closed Church service), but we need to understand that baiting people toward a single event of transformation can rob people of seeing God’s love and investment in their lives that spans beyond one moment.
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Hear, hear. Your last sentence is great. Are you reading Richard Peace’s Conversion in the New Testament? I liked that book a lot despite the fact I found it rather dense and dry. His reading of Mark is fascinating.
I think another danger in focusing on the Damascus Road type of conversion is that those who did not experience such a conversion can feel inadequate or question their faith. I’ve heard many people wonder that if God didn’t knock them down and pull them out of a life of extreme evil, were they really saved? Or people would recast their stories to create a Damascus Road event in order to please others. On the flip side, I also know many who evangelize specifically to get the single-moment conversion and have questioned their ministry when those don’t happen. For what it’s worth, I believe that both do happen and that we need to discern how God is working in someone else’s life. I remember hearing a guy at a church meeting sharing about his conversion. Out of college he wanted to do something good, so he went to work for Habitat for Humanity. It was by being around the staff there and in learning about the Christian roots of the organization that led him over several months to devote his life to Christ. That our churches and parachurches were full of more of these stories.
I too lived the more gradual conversion story. There was no horrendous life of debauchery for me repent of when I became a Christian around the age of six, but I still had to repent of my sinfulness anyway.
I don’t remember what class I learned this in — probably American Church History — but we discussed how altar calls are actually only a couple of centuries old, yet for many, this is the traditional way of conversion. In many revival meetings, walking down to the altar replaced baptism as the outward sign of making a decision to follow Jesus.