Scot McKnight at NOBTS…

February 13, 2007 | 6:56 PM

Scot McKnight, author of the book Jesus Creed and a blog of the same name, spent today at NOBTS lecturing on several topics. I missed the first two due to class, but I did make the third lecture on the sociology of conversion, as he put it. I wouldn’t possibly be able to clearly or more eloquently explain what he said (he’s got it all down on his blog and in his books anyway), but I do want to offer some of the issues he dealt with.

He offered four questions that are definitely much more complicated than they might initially appear:

1. What is conversion; what is a convert?
2. What is the gospel?
3. When are we converted? (He asked when Peter was converted, as an example.)
4. Who told us the gospel was simple?

These are all good questions, and I’ve asked many of them myself. In fact, in 2006 I asked “What is the gospel?” (entry now here, comments here) only to have one friend reply with most of the Book of Romans. Actually, he was probably more onto something than I previously expected, at least with regard to its complexity. As for conversion, McKnight offers a definition for a convert. “A convert is someone whose identity is being transformed because of a relationship with Jesus in the context of the local church.” I can dig that.

At one point, while discussing the centrality of the gospel in the church, he said, “The Gospel we preach produces the churches we get.” I remember having a professor say that we get what we reward in church, and I remember having another professor say that our churches are the result of our system. If the church is broken, then the system is broken. The example I used with my friend is this: If a factory that is supposed to produce twinkies only produces twizzlers, then there is definitely a problem in the factory. If our churches don’t produce transformed lives, or converts (see previous definition), then something is broken: probably our message.

Finally, McKnight offered relatively concise definition of the Gospel in seven propositions:

The Gospel is:

1. the work of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
2. in the context of the community of faith
3. to restore cracked eikons,
4. through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ,
5. through the gift of the Holy Spirit,
6. to union with God, self,
7. others, and the world.

The last thing he got to was his concept of the conversion process. He drew a chart and went through the process: crisis, quest, encounter, and commitment. I could try to explain it here, but I’m just going to let you read his book on it.

Dr. McKnight, if you’re reading this: thanks for coming, and please come back sometime. We enjoyed having you here.

Posted in Blogs, Christianity, Emerging Church, Life, NOBTS, Theology