from the

General Secretary NEVILLE CALLAM

Conversion

The relative infrequency that marks the call to conversion in some Baptist churches today saddens me. Yet, in Baptist understanding, conversion is a cornerstone of Christian spirituality. Influenced by a certain interpretation of biblical teaching,

many Baptists have proclaimed, from the beginning, the mystery of a divine transaction in the human heart fashioned out of a transforming encounter with the risen Lord that graciously leads to conversion. Arthur Nock, the celebrated former Harvard religion

historian, once defined conversion as “the reorientation of the soul of the individual, his deliberate turning from indifference or from an earlier form of piety to another, a turning which implies a consciousness that a great change is involved, that the old was wrong and the new is right.” Is this reorientation, this turning, a matter that is accomplished in a single instance? Is it an instantaneous occurrence that is deepened during a person’s earthly pilgrimage? Is it a gradual process?

Over the years, many Baptists have understood conversion as an immediate and instantaneous experience. In evangelistic campaigns, called

revival meetings in some settings, the

emphasis on an instantaneous conversion is often implied. Meanwhile, some Baptists have come to the conclusion that this popular way of perceiving conversion should give way to one that conceives conversion as an experience that has a particular beginning point but is an ongoing, intensifying process. The one-time experience, that is often a climax of the Holy Spirit’s interventions in a person’s life, marks the subject’s new location in Christ. However, the full realization of this reality dawns on a person over time and the experience changes the contours of the person’s perceptions and lifestyle. It is said that former Southern Baptist Convention President James Gambrell once described conversion as “the end of the Christian life – but it is the front-end.” In my opinion, hardly has anyone more clearly articulated the notion of conversion as a complex experience as the late Puerto Rican Baptist theologian, Orlando Costas, who died too soon, at only 45 years old. Costas’ voluminous literary corpus has provided an understanding of conversion that is as exciting as it is illuminating. Costas explained that his “first conversion” took place during a Billy Graham evangelistic rally in New York on June 8, 1957, when, as he put it, “something strange . . . something unique” happened in his life. At Madison Square Garden, Costas came into a life-changing experience of the saving grace

of God. Yet, his faith journey was marked by renewal of his personal identity and a growing appropriation of the mission on which God sent him. Costas would speak of his three conversions.

Costas saw his mission as encompassing

the inseparable combination of evangelistic fervor and social witness. He characterized his ministerial passion as “the practice of evangelization” and he advocated “contextual evangelism,” which is the crying need of contemporary ecclesial witness. There is no need to separate a passion

for evangelism from Christian social justice engagement. Nor does one need to prioritize the second over the first! Both are important. Yet, the contemporary movement away from the

urgency of the evangelistic mandate is

lamentable. The church that is true to its calling never abandons the twin priorities of evangelism and social engagement. Costas’ counsel rings true: If we can enable Christian women and men

to see the billions who have yet to hear the good news of salvation to commit their lives to their integral evangelization . . . [and] if we can enable them to have prophetic courage and confront social institutions with the demands of the Gospel . . . we shall have been indeed faithful to the whole Gospel and sensitive to the fullness of the world to which God has sent us.

4 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE