The blog has been pretty busy today, so it is about time for me to jump and in and give my two cents worth. First, I believe that question, which is innocent in itself, assumes what I will call at this point a judicial sense of conversion. That is, there is a point in time when God says “OK, you’re trust is genuine, you can be brought across the line, and the verdict is ‘forgiven’.” Such a judicial sense of... Read more

The most stimulating discussions I have had over the years in classes and at churches when I am leading a discussion about conversion or about the Jesus Creed “emerge” from this question: What about you, when do you think Peter was converted? Let’s look briefly at the evidence. In John 1 Peter’s brother, Andrew, has heard from John Baptist about Jesus. He fetches Peter and tells him to come meet Jesus who is the Messiah. John tells us that Jesus... Read more

The most stimulating discussions I have had over the years in classes and at churches when I am leading a discussion about conversion or about the Jesus Creed “emerge” from this question: What about you, when do you think Peter was converted? Let’s look briefly at the evidence. In John 1 Peter’s brother, Andrew, has heard from John Baptist about Jesus. He fetches Peter and tells him to come meet Jesus who is the Messiah. John tells us that Jesus... Read more

This is perhaps not what you are looking for. By “clean” I mean that Christians often want to tell conversion stories that are clean: I was a sinner and then I found Jesus and now I’m squeaky clean. This kind of story happens sometimes — and I know lots of people like this. So this is one kind of story. But there is another kind of story that is far more normal than the “clean stories” suggest. The fact is... Read more

This is perhaps not what you are looking for. By “clean” I mean that Christians often want to tell conversion stories that are clean: I was a sinner and then I found Jesus and now I’m squeaky clean. This kind of story happens sometimes — and I know lots of people like this. So this is one kind of story. But there is another kind of story that is far more normal than the “clean stories” suggest. The fact is... Read more

One of the more interesting features of the Emerging movement (I’m not keen on calling this a “church” until we see some world-wide church structures that encompass the whole) is how it intersects with a fascinating aspect of conversion theory. Conversion theory has concluded that people convert to the Christian faith as a result of an advocate. An advocate is anyone or anything that somehow communicates the gospel to a person at a sufficient depth to lead that person to... Read more

People convert to the Christian faith as a result of some crisis, though a word needs to be said about the meaning of “crisis.” Before that, this: the standard form of “crisis” we often see is what is called the crisis of “conscience,” and it is usually manifested in a sense of guilt that derives from sensing that a person has broken God’s law. Well and good, but conversion is more than ridding ourselves of guilt, and redemption is more... Read more

In this series of reflections based on Turning to Jesus, I want to look today at the various kinds of conversion and then at the context out of which the convert comes. The process of conversion — whether suddenly or gradually — involves the movement from one context (whoever we are and wherever we are) and entrace into another context (“in” Christ, the Church). The context of one’s conversion involves sorting out first the kind of conversion we are dealing... Read more