Should we expect conversion to be an emotional crisis?

Christian Conversion Part 2

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I.

A number of years ago, while teaching at VBS program, I ended my Bible lesson the way I always do. As the lesson was coming to a close, I invited the children to come and talk to me if they wanted to know more about believing in Jesus. On this day, a young girl named Florence responded.

When she came to the back of the room, she was visibly distraught. She shared that she wanted a relationship with God but was terrified to talk to Him because He would scream at her like her parents do. After listening for a while, I got out my Wordless Book and turned to the gold page and began sharing about God’s love.

At some point in our conversation, she told me that she liked to dance. I told her that God likes to dance too; that He dances over her with love. She had never heard this before and was quite surprised. I took her to Zephaniah 3:17 which says, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” Later on she told me that after this conversation she went home, crawled under her covers, and prayed to God really fast...and she lived!

Our conversation continued. The next day she came back to me and I was able to go through the rest of the Wordless Book and lead her to Christ. It was quite a powerful experience to really care for this child where she was at and to see the Word of God begin to make a difference in her life.

As I reflect on my conversations with Florence, it strikes me that this incident is a good example of crisis moment conversion. For Florence, there were two crises. First, she had an actual spiritual crisis thinking that God would scream at her. Second, she had an artificial crisis that I facilitated. I had created an environment that led to only one logical conclusion: a profession of faith. The ground had been laid through a Bible lesson strategically written to climax in a gospel presentation, a pious moment of silence, and an invitation to physically respond and talk with me about believing in Jesus.

This crisis moment conversion that I’ve described is, for many Christians, the expected way someone comes to faith. Why is this? How did the spiritual crisis end up becoming the normal and authentic conversion experience?

II.

The crisis moment conversion has become central to sharing one's testimony. I've always struggled to tell mine because I thought it was too boring and mundane to be authentic. Since I couldn't remember the exact moment of my conversion and was only five years old, I didn't have much time to live in the cesspool of immorality. Whenever I had to write my testimony on paper, I felt like something was missing. I'm thankful God saved me from greater experience in a life of sin. Yet in all this, I wonder if crisis, drama, and emotion should be the mark of an authentic conversion, and where did we get this idea.

The dramatic conversion experience of the Apostle Paul is a seed that has flourished into the tree of crisis conversion we expect today. In Acts 9 we read of a devout Pharisee named Saul whose mission was to imprison Christians. On the road to Damascus, God appears to him in light that blinds him, and tells him of his unique and special calling. He is then taken to Damascus where God changes his name, he gets his sight back, and is told more about his mission to the Gentiles. There’s something inspiring about the drama in this conversion story and the way that Paul’s life was transformed as a result.

However, David F. Wells, professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary points out some problems evangelicals have when interpreting this story. He says,

"Some present day evangelicals have portrayed elements of Paul's conversion as normative that Paul did not deem normative; for example, the suddenness, crisis, and drama of the event. In some evangelical circles, these are understood as hallmarks of a "genuine" conversion...if they do not find them, they may conclude that a genuine commitment to Christ has not occurred thus resulting in those who made multiple "decisions for Christ" and who are still quite uncertain about their relationship with God."

He then goes on to ask: Should we expect this drama in conversion? What part of Paul's conversion should we try to produce? He answers by saying:

The answer from Paul's writings is that [his conversion] is normative theologically but not experientially. In Galatians 1 and Philippians 3, when Paul spoke of the transformation of his life, he did not draw attention to the blinding light or his ecstatic experience. The encounter and its drama and crisis are not important. What is important is the change that took place in Paul's life and the theological interpretation of that change..."¹

This perspective on Paul's conversion and his own interpretation of it challenges modern day sentiment. Indeed, the book of Acts itself offers an array of conversion experiences none of which claim to be the only way. For example, several chapters following the conversion of Paul is the unremarkable story of the conversion of Lydia (Acts 16:11-15).

This highlights the need for a balanced and biblical view of conversion. The Bible highlights conversion as mundane and dramatic, theological and experiential. It seems that exalting crisis conversions may be leading us to expect the wrong thing out of the conversion experience. It's unfortunate, that seemingly mundane conversions are getting the short end of the stick.

III.

Mimicking the drama of Paul’s conversion has been translated into popular evangelical culture through the revivalist techniques of the altar call and sinner’s prayer. While these techniques take many different forms, I imagine that some scene comes to your mind right away. We can easily imagine a large group of Christians gathered in a dimly lite stadium to hear a speaker give a powerful message that pulls on their heart strings. As the message concludes the speaker invites people to come forward and make a profession of faith through prayer. Scenes like this are common; so common, in fact, that I suggest we don’t know how to invite people to believe in Jesus without using one of these techniques.

Such techniques reinforce crisis moment conversion because they create an environment of emotion and drama with the decision to believe in Jesus. Additionally, they focus on a physical response as being a normal and almost necessary part of the conversion experience. Physically responding to an emotional gospel presentation itself is not anti-biblical. A person can do and feel any number of legitimate things at the moment he or she believes in Jesus. Yet, emphasizing these practice so much has created a system of evangelism that is not without legitimate criticism.

A critique of the revivalist tradition has been made by Gordon T. Smith, now the President of Ambrose University in Canada. He says:

“The revivalist heritage has left many contemporary Christians with the belief that conversions are the fruit of the right practices and techniques. By learning these techniques, one can become a ‘soul winner’; with the right methods, one could learn how to ‘lead people to Christ.’ Some Christians have been taught simple formulas in a one-size-fits-all approach to evangelism: ask the right questions, lead people through a series of simple statements, guide them through a timely prayer, and one can state with confidence that these persons have become Christian believers."²

This statement alone warrants enormous consideration and critique. There are no shortage of books on the issues Smith raises. I provide this thought here to make the point that the revivalist tradition has helped to bring the crisis conversion experience to its place of prominence today.³

IV.

Let's take a moment to tie together the threads of this essay. It has attempted to partially answer two of the driving questions I raised in my first essay:

• What does the Bible say about conversion?

• How should that inform our practice?

In exploring these questions, we saw that when we focus too much on the crisis of conversion, we create an imbalance. First, we saw that drama easily becomes more important than the theological realities of turning from self to Christ for salvation. Second, emotion, technique, and physical response have become normal and necessary prerequisites for an authentic conversion experience. While there is a place for feeling, technique, and response in evangelism, when we emphasize these elements too much we can normalize and necessitate elements that the Bible doesn't deem as normal or necessary.

V.

We need to make a shift from expecting the crisis conversion which focuses too much on the beginning. Rather, we need to embrace God's larger purposes in salvation. To do this, let's visit the views of John Wesley and George Whitefield who offer a helpful counter to that of other revivalists. They both practiced aspects of the revivalist techniques above but with one important corrective.

Sean McGever summarizes their theology saying,

"Wesley and Whitefield’s articulation of conversion is a doctrine which is experiential in nature and focuses on the telos [purpose] of salvation more so than the arché [beginning] of salvation."⁴

For these men, conversion had a distinct beginning, but God's invitation to salvation was much larger than just a start. Being a Christian is accepting an invitation to a life of perseverance through the ups and downs of the Christian life. Whether your conversion experience is dramatic or mundane, God invites you to life of discipleship without getting stuck in the past.

1. Wells, David F. Turning to God: Reclaiming Christian Conversion as Unique, Necessary, and Supernatural. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012, 53-64.

2. Smith, Gordon T. Transforming Conversion: Rethinking the Language and Contours of Christian Initiation. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010, 12.

3. This is a mere sketch of the contours of conversion and the revivalist tradition. I've created an annotated bibliography of resources on the topic here, which I'll add to as I continue writing.

4. McGever, Sean. Born Again: The Evangelical Theology of Conversion in John Wesley and George Whitefield. Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020, 7.

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