The Clarity of Conversion

I once heard someone say there is nothing more frustrating than being misunderstood, to which I would agree. This is especially the case when it is something you are passionate about, something that you believe with heart and soul. You want, more than anything, for people to clearly understand.

My faith in Christ is one of those things that is easily misunderstood by people who don’t know me. It’s not because it is complicated or hard to understand but because the mere mention of the words Christ, Jesus, Christian, church, Bible, or pastor can stir up all kinds of emotions, good for some and not so good for many-in my opinion, far too many.

I’ve tried, in conversations I have had with strangers, to sneak around the back looking for a door, just hoping for an opening to share the most incredible news a person could ever hear, the gospel, the message that leads a person to a righteous relationship with a holy God.

This was especially the case when I was a pastor. That word often has a polarizing effect on the hearer. They immediately start looking at you differently, whether apologizing for swearing in front of you or asking you for prayer because they think you have a “special connection” to the “Big Man” upstairs.

There isn’t a way around it…or is there?

I was getting ready to fly to a pastor’s conference and had given much thought to communicating the good news that had transformed my life decades earlier without telling them I was a pastor. I figured that if I could avoid the word “pastor,” I might be able to share what is most important to me with someone I was sitting next to.

Determined, I started the dialogue with the gentleman to my right, the standard banter. “Traveling home or leaving?” Shortly followed by “So, what do you do for a living?”

I knew that the stranger would reciprocate, and I was ready, or so I thought.

“I’m a traveling nurse,” he said, and after a few questions, he asked me the same.

I had given a lot of thought to my response. How could I tell him I was a pastor without using the word, thereby opening the door wide open, to share my faith? Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought it through well enough.

“So, how about you?” He asked.

“I’m in communications.”

It was true, in my mind; I even had a college degree that confirmed it.

“What kind of communications?”

Oh, oh.

“I’m a speaker, speaking to groups of people.”

“What kind of speaking?”

Double, oh, oh!

“Well, I’m a pastor.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Oh,” he replied, “so you told a ‘little fib’.”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, and I put that approach to rest.

But it didn’t solve the dilemma that many of us wrestle with, how to share our faith in a way that is understood.

It boils down to our understanding of conversion. The more we understand our conversion to Christianity, the more clearly we can share it.

I love reading the words of Paul as he was describing his conversion to King Agrippa, a pagan king of Rome. He was explaining Jesus’ instructions to Paul at his conversion.

“I am sending you to open their (Gentiles) eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”

We must be so confident and clear when sharing our conversion to Christianity that it flows naturally from transformed hearts and out of our mouths in words that can be understood.

Sharing our faith with others must never be based on fear of how they might respond, but always sure they will understand.