Conversion - a New Paradigm

I remember, as if it was yesterday, the moment when I asked Jesus to be Lord in my life (and that, by the way, is remarkable given I struggle to recall most things about yesterday). It was a day of light, a moment of dazzling insight, and a critical incident. As an adult theological educator, I have never surpassed the sense of conviction I had that day as an eleven year-old.  

I didn’t tell my parents at the time, because it was my experience (which I learnt was called conversion) and I didn’t want them commenting on it and taking away what I felt was a thing between God and me. But I did ask my mum in a non-specific way if people had to be converted. She said: ‘Yes of course. Jesus would not have died if you could have got into heaven any other way.’  

As I grew older, I realised that lots of Christians who were serious about their faith had never had a conversion like I had. I got the sense that they had ‘slithered into the kingdom’, or else believed they never had to enter it as they were born into it. Clearly I needed to do some theology.

ORIGINAL BLESSING AND ORIGINAL SIN  

Our thinking on conversion ultimately comes down to our thinking on ‘original blessing’ and ‘original sin’. Looking at theology from a wide-angle lens, you will put your focus either on creation or redemption: creation being the very beginning of God’s action in making this beautiful and hurting world (including us), redemption being the cross-shaped intervention of Jesus in sorting out a broken world.  

Theologians who focus on creation will talk about original blessing, because their emphasis is on God making us in such a way that we are naturally in relationship with him. Their focus is on a time before the fall, before sin and brokenness. Their vision is attractively positive and they see God’s natural hand on people, whether they know it or not, and as such they expect people (including children) to come to faith in Jesus as a means of becoming whole, of completing an initial blessing which comes to fruition. As Blaise Pascal (1623-62) said:  

‘The infinite abyss (of incompletion  caused by separation from God) can be filled only with an infinite and unchangeable object; in other words by God himself’  (Pensees 10.148)

Christians who think like this and who work with children may emphasise nurture above conversion, and will use the image of a seed. They see the role of the children’s worker as watering the seed naturally present in the child. They are like a gardener tending seedlings that have been placed by God into the greenhouse of the world.  

By contrast, the more traditional teaching of original sin has long been taught as a staple (and previously unchallenged) doctrine by the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Theologians who focus on redemption will talk about original sin as a teaching that presumes the fall from grace (when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden). It will cite the tendency of all humans to deviate from following God naturally and will emphasise the inherent sinfulness of children and of adults. As the Psalmist says (51:5), ‘I was born a sinner, yes, from the moment my mother conceived me’. Even if we want to do what is correct, we end up falling short of our best intentions. Such teaching is traced back to saint Augustine (354-430), whose ideas on original sin were popular among the Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin; they equated original sin with concupiscence (the innate tendency to sin).  

Christians who think like this and who work with children may emphasise conversion above nurture, and will use the image of a knot. They see the role of the children’s worker as undoing the knot naturally present in the child. They are like a gardener weeding the soil around the seeds, eradicating weeds from the seeds.  

THE SEED AND THE KNOT  

As a theologian who specialises in children’s ministry, I ask myself: am I someone who works with the image of the seed or the knot? Both the image of the seed and the image of the knot carry aspects of educational practice which are necessary. We need to be both nurturers (tenders of the seed) and evangelists (undoers of the knot). We need to work with those with whom God is clearly already working and also with those with whom this is less obvious. Both images can be considered to be biblical but they carry different emphases in how we do children’s ministry.

 So, let’s go back to conversion. If you think of children’s ministry from the angle of original blessing, using the image of a seed, getting converted will be seen as a gradual dawning, when a child has a new awareness of God. It is a steady process of understanding oneself as a child of God, much like Timothy, the third generation Christian (2 Timothy 1:5) who inherited the faith from his mother and grandmother. It is like the flowering of a snowdrop that has lain in the frozen ground that appears after winter. Once it was not there but then it shows itself.  

If you think of children’s ministry from the angle of original sin, using the image of a knot, getting converted is when the penny drops. It is that moment when a former way of thinking is confronted and rejected. From now on it will be different. It might be a one-off moment like Saul on the road to Damascus in Acts chapter nine; he was on a road from God and now he was travelling into God.  

It has become clearer to me that the key thing is not so much about the process but that it happens, and what happens is encounter - the moment when a child encounters God. How a child realises that they are loved by God is probably immaterial. What matters is that they become aware of God’s hand on their lives and that they follow Jesus. Will it be a sudden conversion or a gradual dawning? From God’s perspective, the key thing is that they know his presence, walk with him and follow his leading. From a child’s perspective, how they get to know God might be quite varied.      

THE CHILD’S EXPERIENCE  

The experience of the child, however, will    differ according to the minister’s feelings on original blessing or original sin. The image of the seed dominant in the discourse of original blessing is clearly a positive one, reminiscent of the Pauline reminder that:  

‘I planted (the seed of the gospel), Apollos watered it, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth’ (1 Corinthians 3:6-7)  

It is a reminder that the fields are ‘ripe and ready for harvest’ (Luke 10:2, Matthew 9:37 and John 4:35). It is a call to notice that mission belongs to God. It is God’s mission (the Missio Dei), not the Church’s mission.  

Therefore the children’s minister working from the concept of original blessing is encouraged by such theology to relax into God’s sovereign purposes and to see themselves as working within the grain of a bigger picture. It does not all depend on them but on God. Their task is simply to find out what God is doing and to join in. Gone is the anxiety of being overly concerned about eternal destiny. That is for God to know, not the minister. From the child’s point of view, the experience of being ministered to by someone who believes in original blessing is likely to be affirming. They are unlikely to feel coerced or pressurised into making a commitment but they might never even be asked to respond at all.     

However the flip side to such theology might be an overly laid back approach that expresses no urgency and becomes disinterested in conversion. Critics have suggested that such a positive view of the developing child is nothing short of naïve.

From the alternative discourse of original sin, the image of the knot is more salutary. It is the dominant ideology and can easily be traced back to Paul’s discussion of sin in the letter to the Romans. He is clear that:

‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus’ (Romans 3:23-24)     

Therefore the children’s minister working from the concept of original sin is encouraged by such theology to be attentive to the plight of humanity and especially the children in their care. The gospel of salvation has been entrusted to them and, ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!’ (1 Corinthians 9:16). The emphasis may well be more on the responsibility of the minister than on the sovereignty of God. It is quite likely that there will be a sense of urgency in their need to ‘preach the gospel to all nations’ (Mark 16:15) and to ‘look forward to the day of God and to speed its coming’ (2 Peter 3:12). This urgency to preach the gospel has been a key feature in nearly all missionary enterprises, such as the 19th Century missionary movement, when there was an increased sense that time was short, that Jesus was coming back, that the ‘day of grace’ would be ended and that the time for reckoning was at hand.

Critics have suggested that such a view directed upon the developing child is nothing short of abusive, as it could frighten them or manipulate their early consciousness. This has been well detailed in such stories as Edmond Gosse’s account of his early childhood entitled Father and Son. This story is an example of religious abuse in the home context seen in that style of parenting employed by the eminent zoologist Philip Gosse, a Victorian member of a 19th Century Christian sectarian movement. Although he clearly loved his son Edmund, Philip Gosse prevented him from reading poetical works of imagination and forced him to consider his own scientific insights set within a fundamentalist worldview. The pain that this caused was to emerge in his book in 1907, in which this form of religious abuse is seen to vex and subdue a creative and sensitive child in his early spiritual exploration.

From the child’s point of view, the experience of being ministered to by someone who believes in original sin is not likely to be affirming until such point as the child discovers the love of God. Depending on the sensitivity of the child’s character, they might feel coerced or pressurised into making a commitment. Current research into children’s spirituality flags the potential danger of an overly simplistic presentation of Christian faith that allows little means of exploration, such as the standard four-point gospel presentation in which children are taught to respond:  

1. God loves me

2. I have sinned

3. Jesus died for me  

4. I can live for him

While many, myself included, can testify to using such a simple formula in leading children to commitment and of having stories that note how it has been used to enable early faith to flourish, it is documented that the same approach can also have negative long-term consequences for others. In other words, although the four points mentioned are easily understood and contain the kernel of the metanarrative of the gospel, they leave    little room for reflection and a child might ‘go through the motions’, using such a formulaic approach without engaging their emotions. It can lead to ‘easy believism’ and therefore to a potentially easy exit from faith, if that first experience is seen to lack plausibility. Also, and more worryingly, the four-point gospel presentation could be used in a coercive way by an adult who desires to see the child converted. In the past, children’s evangelists, keen to chalk up professions of faith, have been known to bounce children through the four stages without time to understand the lifelong commitment of following Jesus. They might have done this for their own hubris or because they were terrified that children who did not ‘say the prayer’ would go to a lost eternity. Whatever their motivation, their actions have bordered on spiritual abuse.

My long-term aim is that children will have an encounter with Jesus Christ, taught with the urgency and street wisdom of those whose lens is of original sin but balanced by the faith and hopefulness of those whose lens is original blessing. I am also deeply committed that children’s ministers are not tainted by any form of religious abuse arising from unprocessed theology or undeveloped thinking. Such holistic and life-giving mission will be the actions of those children’s ministers who ‘become themselves like little children’ (Matthew 18:2-4). Let us look for conversion as the new life given by God across the lifespan. Initially, conversion will be the moment when a child senses faith in God (which is regeneration). After that there will be many more conversions as the child becomes more like Jesus (which is the process of sanctification). For all of us, it is a steady growth downwards as we become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of God.

FURTHER READING (BOTH BY H WORSLEY) Church of England Schools as Centres of Religious Abuse or Avenues for Religious Nurture International Journal of Children’s Spirituality  Knots, Nuts and New Sheets (Thinking Theologically with educationalists) Journal of Anglican Secondary School Headteachers September (2008) Vol 21