I have thought a good deal about conversions this quarter, which I didn’t expect to happen when it began. In my preaching practicum, “Making Doctrine Live,” I was assigned the text of Acts 16:25-34 (conversion of the Philippian jailer) and instructed to relate it to the doctrine of conversion. A few weeks before I was supposed to preach the sermon, we talked about conversion stories in my “Congregation as Learning Community” (CLC) course.

I have always thought of conversion as a process, more than the instantaneous transformation of one person from unbeliever to believer. When we discussed conversions in CLC, Mark Lau Branson pointed to the work of Roman Catholic theologian, Donald Gelpi. Gelpi outlines five areas in which conversion has both an initial moment and an ongoing process: affective (emotional), intellectual, moral, sociopolitical, and Christian (or religious). Branson adds “local congregation” as a sixth category. In these categories, Gelpi borrows from secular definitions of conversion, in which conversion constitutes:

“ . . . change from irresponsibility to responsibility that includes accountability, in which persons acknowledge a duty to render an account of the motives and consequences of their decisions to someone or to some community of persons. Conversion is possible in natural and supernatural spheres, which are interrelated.” (“Branson on Gelpi on Conversion,” in-class handout).

In other words, conversion is not as simple as we might believe if we listen to most television preachers. For example, I actually had a moral conversion before my Christian conversion. As it happens, I was a pretty bad kid as an early adolescent. In those junior high years, I shoplifted and generally got into lots of trouble with a buddy of mine that was my partner in crime (literally). During this two year phase of mine, my parents couldn’t do anything to change my behavior. Then, one day, my buddy and I got picked up at a local department store for shoplifting some junk food. It wasn’t the first time I got caught, in fact it was the second time that week, but this time was different.

Rather than pick me up herself, my mother decided to let the police escort us home. The officer that came to pick me up happened to be my DARE officer from sixth grade. I had tremendous respect for this man, who had taught me to “just say no.” So, when I saw the look of disappointment on his face and heard it in his voice, I was suddenly transformed. I stopped hanging out with my fellow hoodlum and concentrated instead on singing in school choir. I stopped my criminal activities and became good friends with a fellow choir member who eventually introduced me to the Christian faith.

This is an example of how one conversion was both “initial” and “ongoing,” while it also led down a path towards other conversions. Thinking about these conversions in class not only helped me see new and interesting things in the jailer’s conversion in Acts as I planned my sermon. The exercise also helped me consider what it means that conversion is a process in my own life.

This theme stood out so strongly to me, I think I will write a second post on some of my intellectual and sociopolitical conversions. The two categories are intimately connected for me.