When I first got to UNC last fall, I told all my student leaders that I wanted to sit down with each one of them (60+) by the beginning of October.
My goal during these sit-downs was simply to get to know them a little bit. So my first question was: "Tell me your story." I asked them to tell me about their growing up, their family, where they lived, how they ended up at UNC, and what the significant markers were during their faith journey.
Something interesting happened as I listened to these folks. Most of them were embarrassed by their story of coming to faith. It wasn't cool enough, scandalous enough. They wanted drama--a dark history that then was suddenly transformed by a single moment of conversion that marked a radical shift in the trajectory of their lives. Most of them, having grown up in Christian homes, had a series of events that were a part of their process of coming to faith.
The professor teaching my class is arguing that we have insufficient language and frameworks for understanding what conversion really is. For 99% of people, conversion, coming to faith in Christ and following Him with our whole lives, is a process and not a one-time event.
The language we most often use to describe our conversion experiences (the exact day and time we prayed a certain prayer or walked down an aisle) is left over from the Revivalist Movement in the 19th century. Southern Baptists and Holiness and Pentecostal churches are the traditions that are most shaped by this tradition.
But this event-oriented, one-time, dramatic experience is an odd standard for conversion. The twelve disciples didn't experience this. Most of the spiritual autobiographies throughout church history (Augustine, Blaise Pascal, C.S. Lewis, etc.) don't read like this. Most of us won't have that type of one-hit experience either.
It raises some interesting questions about when someone is actually a Christian, or if that's even the right question. For right now, I'm thinking about how a conversion-as-a-process understanding might free up people like myself and my students to be more joyful in telling our stories and a little less apologetic.
4 comments:
If you continue to blog well while in Madison I'm going to feel like I'm taking the course. Just the out I needed to spend every July 4th on the jet ski instead of hanging in the cheese state...
Can I just say AMEN?
You work on this lingo, I'll work on racial rec lingo, we'll get someone to get evangelicals excited about reading and recycling and playing/praying with low-income children and soon the entire world will be pulchritudinous. (Ok, so maybe not, but...)
As someone who could possibly describe my own conversion and story with drama and one key moment where the last puzzle piece fell into place and I believed, I have to say I wouldn't wish that on anyone. The story with drama leads to all kinds of baggage and places where I'm vunerable to spiritual attack (guilt for what I've done, comparing myself to other christians and being led to believe i'm not as saved because it's all still very new to me).
I know both the dramatic, I was saved on such and such date at 11:05am sort of stories have their place and merit. And I know that the gradual process of conversion can have it's pitfalls as well, but it serves a purpose and glorifies God as well. God works in us as He sees fit, gradual or sudden, and just because it wouldn't be a new york times bestseller doesn't mean everyone's story isn't precious and glorifying to God.
where's your seminary class?
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