Each local church, whether radically independent or associated with a larger denomination, institutionalizes a conversion orientation. A church does this by the way it presents the gospel, by the way it teaches Sunday School, by the way it preaches from the pulpit, by the way it shapes the programs and platforms.

As I point out in Turning to Jesus, the Church institutionalizes this process in three orientations. And we each come to faith in one of these orientations or as a result of a combination of them. I will not be able in these blogs to tell all those stories I have in the book, but the guts are here for some discussion.

Perhaps the oldest form is socialization. In the history of the Church this orientation has acquired all kinds of names — catechism and nuture being the two most prominent, but the essence of it is this: children are “reared into” the faith by their family and community of faith. This is as old as Israel’s principle of teaching kids the Shema (Deut 6:4-9) and it has proven to be an effective means of leading generation after generation into the faith. Charles Spurgeon longed for his boys to come to faith the way the sun emerges from the horizon, and I have myself seen plenty of students and known many pastors who have told me that they never had a time in their life that they didn’t believe.

A second orientation is a a more structured form of the first: I call it liturgical process but I’m not sure there isn’t a better term. At any rate, the socialization orientation here gets a more official, ecclesiastical, and liturgical/sacramental shape. Children are nurtured into the faith through a Church-directed process like infant baptism, catechism, confirmation, and the like. The difference between the socialization and liturgical process is the emphasis given to family context or to ecclesiastical context. Many examples could be given, but one thinks of folks like Saint Macrina or Gregory of Nyssa or Thomas Aquinas or many Anglican divines.

A third orientation is called personal decision, which of course is the hallmark emphasis of Evangelicalism. Here the emphasis is given to each person making a personal decision to believe in Jesus Christ. It is not that this is a complete “alternative” to either the socialization process or the liturgical process, but the emphasis here is notable.

The first two emphasize process; the third emphasizes a moment (though many today would say the moment is a moment in a bigger process).

Now a few points:

The first one is this: each orientation is nervous about the others. If you tell a socialized convert that personal decision is necessary, they get nervous; personal decision folks can’t comprehend the conversion story of those who say “I was baptized as a baby and been a Christian ever since” even if that person is as much (or more) a follower of Jesus.

Second, human beings come to faith in different ways and it is a tragedy that churches institutionalize one and only one orientation. Those who grow up in personal decision churches who actually grow into the faith pretty easily struggle with their lack of conversion story, and liturgical sorts who one day had it all “click” and start blabbing about it make others fell uncomfortable. Why not have more churches just admit that humans come to faith in different ways?

Third, there are as many gradual conversions as there are sudden ones. There are as many Peters as there are Pauls — in fact, probably more like Peter than Paul. (I often ask the question here that gets lots of folks thinking: When was Peter converted? John 1, Luke 5, Mark 8, John 21, Acts 2, or Acts 10–11?

What would our evangelism practices and discipleship programs look like if we adopted an adaptable orientation mindset?

One of my former students, Ron Martoia (who never returns my e-mails or phone calls), “institutionalized” this thinking at Westwinds — so I’ve been told (but he doesn’t answer back for me to find out if this is true). (Which, if you know him, you might tell him I’m waiting.)