Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury -- http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday .

Were you Born Again?

Do you remember when people were born again all at once? Converted in an instant, or occasionally (for hard cases) in a few hours. They prayed at an altar. Or prayed in Billy Graham's counseling room. Or received Christ after going through the four Spiritual Laws. Presto! They became Christians in a moment. That fast! They could give you a date. Many could sing It-was-on-a-Monday... or whatever other day it was. Because they knew the day.

Today this sort of instantaneous model of conversion is in total meltdown. Most evangelicals are abandoning it in favor of faith development or spiritual formation models of conversion. Conversion today is something that happens gradually, over a period of time, and you no longer need to know exactly when you were actually born again to know that you are alive. In fact the terms born again and conversion are disappearing or being gradually redefined.

OK, I admit we still have instantaneous conversion for some -- the outright down-and-outers who obviously need saved from their sins. And it is still there for criminals, but do you think for a moment that Chuck Colson would call his book today by the title Born Again? A datable, instantaneous conversion experience is no longer average. It is increasingly becoming the exception, not the rule. For sure, it is no longer a prerequisite to join most evangelical churches or even to teach Sunday school or to teach classes at many evangelical colleges. Claiming present faith or current trust in Christ is quite enough, even if you can't tell about the time you were born again. In fact, you can get away now by saying, "Oh, I've always been a Christian -- I was raised that way." Why is this? Why are so many evangelicals abandoning their former insistence on an instantaneous conversion?

For one we've got a lot of second generation Christians in our churches. These folk weren't saved off the streets. They were saved in their cribs. Or before. Many were raised in the Horace Bushnell way -- never knowing a time when they didn't have faith. They have faith, but don't know when they got it. How can you insist on a conversion story from such as these -- our own kids?

Then there's our socioeconomic upward drift. Our class of prospects is now classier. They're not guilty of the down-and-out sins that need obvious and immediate deliverance. The upper classes get their deliverance gradually, in twelve steps, not all at once. Higher classes have always spurned dramatic Damascus Road conversions. The more upwardly mobile our people, the less they'll opt for this kind of conversion model.

Beside the socioeconomic upward drift, we have simultaneously had a downward drift in absolute standards. There are no longer many things a converted person can't do. Be honest. What might you say that almost all evangelicals would agree are things that a real Christian never does? Things you just can't do and be a Christian? Not many right? There are now fewer sins we expect people to be delivered from at once. Or even at all.

Then, of course. There's transfer growth; Evangelicals have enlarged our market share primarily by gaining customers who used to shop at main line churches. We've offered a politically conservative, warmer-hearted, more exciting, approach to God than the downtown stodgy old-fashioned main line churches. Second generation mainliners switched. Now evangelicals *are* the mainline church. We left the old folk down town in dying main line churches, and took in their children's families. These wonderful, steady, respected, professional, workers came by transfer. Most of them had no datable conversion to tell about, but we thought they had a real experience anyway. After all, they tithed. And that was better than some of our so-called converted people. In the interviews for membership some of the early ones invented an experience which sounded like conversion, but most evangelicals finally quit asking for it, feeling we were only forcing something contrived. We started asking about their faith journey instead, the equivalent of Tell-me-about-your-marriage..., rather than Did-you-have-a-wedding?

Of course if I'm right about this shift away from instantaneous conversion, evangelicals would have to make some other changes too. For instance, the altar call would have to be shifted to another mode of use. Our testimony language would have to change from highlighting past-tense experience to present-tense affirmation of faith. And we would have to make peace with the main line churches, perhaps even apologizing for lambasting them so much in the past. We'd have to quit asking people about a born again experience when interviewing for church membership -- we'd want to hear about their present walk with God and their faith journey to date. And, if we were making this shift, we'd need to totally change the way we think about evangelism -- indeed evangelism would look a lot more like discipleship, maybe even get totally swallowed up by discipleship.

So, am I right? Is instantaneous conversion in the wane? If so, why? What are the results? The unintended consequences? Is it a good shift? Bad?
 

So what do you think?

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