Going Public

As I have struggled in the past several years to reconstruct my faith, one issue has continued to be difficult to fit into place: conversion.

I've struggled to reconcile my own experience, with the tradition I received, and then my own awkwardness or inability to transfer what it means.

What needs to be understood? What does someone need to know? Experience? Believe? Have right? Submit to? Say? Do? What exactly is faith? Works? Fruit? Reconciliation? Atonement? Justification? Reconciliation? Adoption?

And then, what do we call it? Born Again? Saved? Converted? Accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior?

And the deeper we get into it, the longer we are enculturated to it, the more simplistic and monochromatic and one-dimensional it becomes for us. And we begin to think everyone understands. It's like lying in the middle of a merry-go-round...you can soon forget that you are spinning at all until you move toward the perimeter, then its hard to even gain a focus of the world around you.


There seem to be two things that are making more sense to me as I re-read the stories in scripture of people who became followers of Jesus:

1. When people were seeking God, God sent someone their way who could answer their questions
2. So the starting point of the story is never the same, but the stories converge with finding God in Jesus.

Ever tried to get on a merry-go-round when it is spinning very fast?! Imagine that merry-go-round never slowing down, never giving you the opportunity to jump in, even if you wanted to...that is how disconnected some of our language has become.

It seems like more and more what I see is students looking at faith, spirituality, morality, religion, etc...just spinning around them and their doesn't seem to be a good entry point. A point to jump on, even when some closer to the middle yell, "Come on, you can do it. Just jump on."

Further from the center, and especially from the outside, tt doesn't look possible or particularly safe.

Sometimes, rather than yell...we try to grab on. Ever do that?! Reach out and grab someone while that thing is spinning our of control? Never a good idea! Usually ends badly.

Sometimes from the outside looking in it looks like everyone is already having a good time and not really interested in slowing down to let you on board. That really sucks. Makes playing somewhere else much more appealing.


As I was talking with a friend of mine last night, he described how he had been coming to church, and how "your talks are great", I like the way "you guys do things" and how he's really "seeing value" in it. Then he said something I recognized in others, but they had never said in these words, "I just don't know where I am supposed to start."

Not everyone is standing on the outside waiting to jump on, but for those who are, I am convinced that God is calling us to jump off and stand on the outside with them and help them find the entry point. To slow that thing down...by taking the time to help them find the entry point.

We'll do more harm than good by trying to grab them on our way by.

Next post...a look at entry points.