A "Sea Change" in Our View of Conversion?

In a Christianity Today entry, Gordon T. Smith says that evangelicals are leaving "revivalism" behind for a deeper and more historic view of conversion. My take: "His observation is true," "The change is good," and "Be careful you don't lose something essential in the change."

"Revivalism" is Smith's label for the once almost-monolithic view of conversion among evangelicals. Characteristics of this view included:

* A "punctiliar experience: persons could specify with confidence and assurance the time and place of their conversion, by reference, as often as not, to the moment when they prayed what was typically called 'the sinner's prayer.'"

* "What counted was the afterlife. And if one had 'received Christ,' one could be confident of one's eternity with God."

* "Typically evangelicals approached evangelism through the use of techniques or formulas by which a person would be introduced to spiritual principles or 'laws' on the assumption that if these principles were accepted as "true," a person would offer an appropriate prayer and thus 'become' a Christian."

* "Baptism, it was insisted, was subsequent to conversion and essentially optional. For although baptism was thought to be perhaps important, true spiritual experience was considered a personal, interior, subjective experience."

* The business of the church was in "making conversions happen; its life and mission were oriented toward getting more people converted through whatever means possible. Successful congregations were characterized by numerical 'conversion growth.'"

* "The making of disciples was thought to be subsequent to conversions. Thus evangelicals would speak of 'making converts into disciples'" and "typically the approach to evangelism was distinct from the approach to spiritual formation."

Smith suggests several reasons why these "fundamental categories and assumptions of revivalism are thus being questioned as never before."


My response? Three.


"His observation is true." Whether you applaud it or lament it, there is a "sea change" in the way evangelicals view conversion.

"The change is good." Several of the assumptions of what Smith calls "revivalism" need to be corrected. Here are a few:

* Why did we ever allow baptism to become secondary to the "moment of surrender"? Baptism is the public identification with the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not an optional accessory one may decide to add after the "essential" act of surrender has taken place. "Crusade evangelists" in the recent past often asked their audience whether they could remember a specific time they made a public profession of faith and, if not, they were urged to do so during the event so they would have a date to look back on. In Romans 6, if Paul is actually challenging someone to look back and see if they can recall a specific, pivotal date, it was the moment of their baptism that he was asking them to recall.

* It's true that as churches started seeing their "business" as conversion-making, a film of dust settled over other activities: the inherent value of worship and the Lord's Supper, for example, or the place of spiritual growth and church discipline.

* It's good that evangelicals are beginning to see that conversion is a process--and an-often complex one, at that. A man raised in central Asia who just completed my Anchor Course is a good example of this: At the start of the 9-week study he described himself in "outsider" language as an investigator of the Christian claims, but by the end of our 2 months together I noticed him using the inclusive terms of someone who considered himself a fellow believer. Somewhere along the way he had "moved in" to the Christian worldview.

* It's good that we're seeing that conversion happens as people are invited in to the life of the Christian community to spend some time just "looking over our shoulders," so to speak, as we go about the work of the Christian community: worshipping God and teaching each other and serving the world.

"Be careful you don't lose something essential in the change." That's my third thought after reading Smith's post. Smith is correct to speak favorably about how evangelicals have opened themselves to "cross-pollination" from other Christian traditions, but the value of such exchange should not be one-sided. In other words, while there is certainly something that "revivalism" can learn from other Christian traditions, there are values that "revivalism" can contribute to others as well.

* Let's not let talk of a more wholistic mission for the church morph into an embarrassment of conversion as a vital part of that whole. Of course the church is not just a "conversion-making" business, but churches who don't count it a priority to help unbelievers convert to belief will soon be out of business.

* Let's not let talk of conversion being a "process" morph into an inability (or unwillingness) to clearly define the line in that "process" that one has to cross to go from unbelief to belief.

* Let's not let the new emphasis on enriching the experience of Christian community morph into a reluctance to challenge the worldview of those who aren't yet a part of it. Christian communities need to be busy worshipping God and teaching each other and serving the world. But the unbelievers inevitably attracted to such beautiful communities should be given not just an invitation to observe us but also a clear call to join us. This includes an explanation of our beliefs, an invitation to yield to the saving Lordship of Jesus, and a challenge to declare that surrender publicly in baptism.

In short, those from what Smith calls a "revivalist" tradition have our own role to play in making sure the whole body of the Lord Jesus Christ stays healthy. We have some things to learn from other Christian traditions--and we have some things to teach them.