Many of you know that I have published a book on conversion, Turning to Jesus, and that I have also done two studies of conversion of a more particular nature: one on why Evangelicals convert to Roman Catholicism (see sidebar in Studies I have online) and one on why Jews convert to faith in Jesus as Messiah (forthcoming this winter/spring). I have been trying to collect stories on why Roman Catholics become Evangelicals, and this is where I need your help: I’ve not been able to get a sufficient number of stories to collect enough evidence to write my next piece. So, please send me your story if you can or encourage someone else to do so.
What should it be like? Above all, it should be “your” story. What helps most is if you explore and think and write about your past and what it was that precipitated your conversion to evangelicalism. What kind of crisis did you experience? What did you go through? Who influenced you? What influenced you? What was it like for your family? Why did you sense a need that your current faith was not adequate? These sorts of things — but above all it needs to be “your” story.
How long? As long as you’d like — but the best ones are about 10-20 pages (double-spaced). Some are longer, as there are things that have to be explained, but a short one-pager doesn’t do it.
Finally, if you’d like some “theory” of conversion, look at my Categories: Conversion and you can see there that I summarize my Turning to Jesus book.
Please don’t publish your story in my Comment box, but send it to me e-mail (smcknight@northpark.edu) or send it to my office: Scot McKnight, North Park University, 3225 W. Foster Ave., Chicago, IL 60625. (You won’t get paid, and neither will I — but I’ll publish the results here, too, and send you a copy of the article when published.)