From Conversion to Concern

Conversion, traditionally as basic to Christianity as prayer, is today a concept in evolution. Conservative and fundamentalist church groups still hew faithfully to the Biblical injunction, "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them." Among renewal-minded clergy of the main-stream Protestant faiths, there is widespread doubt about whether gaining new members for the organized church is the primary goal of true Christianity.

Meeting in Atlanta last week, members of the National Council of Churches' Commission on Evangelism spent their sessions discussing race relations and experimental ministries that seek to serve men rather than convert them. "The concept of evangelism is broadening to include the totality of a man's life," explained Dr. Gerald Jud of the United Church of Christ. "Old evangelism tried to get everybody inside the ark. Today the church is trying to get the significance of God's love to people outside the ark."

Cost of Ecumenism. Why are Christians less interested in getting others inside the ark? Among U.S. Roman Catholics, whose conversion total dropped from 146,212 in 1959 to 126,209 last year, ecumenism seems to be a major cause. Thanks to new hopes for the eventual union of Christianity, and to a new appreciation for the spiritual qualities of other faiths, Catholics appear to have lost their zeal to bring others into what they traditionally believe to be Christ's one true church. "Focusing their attention upon corporate reunion " says the Rev. John A. O'Brien of Notre Dame University's Bureau of Religious Research, "Catholics seem to have overlooked the importance and necessity of continuing the convert apostolate to the individual."

For Protestants, talk of corporate merger and interfaith cooperation have reduced interdenominational tensions almost to the vanishing point, making it possible for a layman to switch allegiances as painlessly as he changes homes or jobs. As a result, church "conversions" in fast-growing areas often amount to nothing more than "ecclesiastical cannibalism" of the already committed. Many churches in today's mobile America are so busy absorbing transfers that they are content to limit their outreach to people with a high motivation for joining--their own Sunday-school graduates, or suburban couples with children. Of suburban Washington families whose houses cost $22,000 or more, at least 65% belong to a church, compared with 3% of those who live immured in apartments and "peep at you through a hole in the door," as one frustrated minister puts it.

Latent Crisis. If Protestants in general seem to have gone from hard sell to no sell, it may be because traditional approaches to evangelism are out of date. Revival-style preaching, for example, rings hollow in the ears of educated laymen. A number of ministers who admire Billy Graham as a person have grave reservations about his "decisions for Christ" approach--the "ability in 45 minutes to bring out a latent crisis in your life, usually guilt over one sin or another," as the Rev. Stephen Rose, editor of Chicago's Renewal magazine puts it.

One traditional means of evangelism that still works is person-to-person contact, in homes or offices, made by Christians who witness to their faith by how they live, not what they say. This kind of witness most often produces converts to new, small and struggling churches, whose members have a natural zeal to bring in people to share both the burden and the joy. The conversion success of the Mormons (a 7.7% growth rate last year) and the Southern Baptists (374,418 baptisms in 1964) may be due partly to their custom of spawning churchlets as rapidly as possible. Says Dr. Glen E. Braswell of the Colorado Baptist General Convention, which has organized 100 new churches in the past ten years: "Where the American Baptists may have one large church, we will have four or five or a dozen in the same community."

Great Things for Sod? As a rule, says Lyle Schaller of the Cleveland-Akron Regional Church Planning Office, ardor begins to cool when a church becomes selfsupporting. By the time it grows to cathedral size, organization may stifle altogether the spiritual ambitions of a genuine convert. "A convert enters a church ready to do great things for God, and the first thing he is asked to do is serve on the altar flower committee," notes Chicago Lutheran Theologian Martin Marty.

But should Christianity really be all that concerned with adding names to church rosters? Many Protestant thinkers believe that the church has a hard enough task "converting" the baptized heathens already on its rosters--the millions of comfortable Christians who joined the church without undergoing any radical change in their vision or way of life. "I even think that no growth could be a healthy sign," says Dr. Jud. The new approach to evangelism--visible in such "unstructured ministries" as coffeehouses, industrial missions, and missions to drag strips, ski resorts, and "night people"--is primarily interested not in selling Christianity but in sympathetically expressing a human concern for others.

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