A few months ago, I mentioned that one of the best books I read last year was Gordon Smith’s Transforming Conversion. While the book was fairly in depth, his main idea was simple enough to grasp… we – especially those who identify in some way with evangelical Christianity in North America – should give some serious thought to what it means for a person to come to faith. The way we talk about conversion is lopsided at best, and at times can even be detrimental for a person’s spiritual development and self-understanding.
I could share various examples of what I mean, but I mainly wanted to point you to an article by Smith that recently appeared on Christianity Today’s website. It is entitled “The New Conversion,” and as you might guess it is more of the same. The benefit for you is that it is article-length versus book-length.
It [would] not be an overstatement to say that evangelicals are experiencing a “sea change”—a paradigm shift—in their understanding of conversion and redemption, a shift that includes the way in which they think about the salvation of God, the nature and mission of the church, and the character of religious experience. Although there is no one word to capture where evangelicals are going in this regard, there is a word that captures what they are leaving behind: revivalism.
Read it all HERE.