Nick Spencer,
Director of Studies, Theos
www.theosthinktank.co.uk


Why would anyone become a Christian today? Why, when God is dead, religion a cause of global conflict, and the Church inflexible, irrelevant and illiberal, would anyone in his right mind embrace the Christian faith?
People do, although surprisingly little research is done to find out why. Recently, the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity partnered with the ecumenical group ACTS (Action of Churches Together in Scotland) to explore how and why people became Christians.
The study was qualitative, comprising 41 in-depth, one-to-one interviews, and was limited to Scotland. It made no pretence at being comprehensive or definitive but rather offered a snapshot of how people “find faith today”, to borrow the title of the last, major, quantitative study, from the early 1990s.
A snapshot it may have been, but it was still compelling in its colour and diversity. Peoples’ stories were so varied and different that almost any statement made about the way in which they come to faith can be contradicted by some piece of data. Journeys to faith tend to be gradual – but for some it was sudden and decisive. Personal interaction played a key role – but one or two respondents were more affected by books or films. The church had an overpowering and positive impact – but for some it was and remains more of an obstacle than a signpost. The first lesson was clear. Don’t oversimplify. The journey to faith does not take place along a conveyor-belt. Beyond this, four key points stood out.

1. People
It is people who bring others to Christ, but not special or particular people. The research showed that you didn’t have to be a minister, an elder or a theology graduate to play this role. Everyone – “our son... my sister... my gran... my ex-girlfriend... this family I teach... my wife’s colleague” – played their part. There were no extras in people’s journeys.

2. God

This is obvious, you would think, but as a researcher you don’t really want God to turn up. He doesn’t do things your way. It is simply not possible to validate what respondents interpreted as a spiritual experience. Did events occur in the way people claimed? If so, were they meaningless coincidences or meaningful “coincidences”? If they were meaningful, were they spiritual? If they were “spiritual”, were they “of God”? Such questions are not meant to write off interviewees’ accounts but, rather, to recognise that recording a spiritual experience is not to authenticate it.
That said, however we might choose to interpret these experiences, one thing was clear. Compared with Finding Faith Today, respondents recorded spiritual experiences more frequently and appeared to take them more seriously. No matter how bizarre or dramatic – and some were bizarre and dramatic – no-one said they dropped to their knees and converted on the spot. Instead, such experiences indicated, however obliquely, that there might possibly be something or someone else there.

3. Little things
It was not just the big things – events, sermons, “miracles” – which were important. There was genuine and profound significance in the insignificant. One respondent remembered noticing a Bible on a colleague’s table at home. Another was touched by the warmth with which people responded when her toddler ran screaming up the aisle after communion. A third was surprised when someone she had met the previous week greeted her again and remembered her name. Incidental details had an impact. Again, they didn’t convert people. They didn’t even slowly mount up until respondents were compelled into faith. They were simply there, barely visible signs and reminders of the “somewhere else” to which people were often blindly stumbling.

4. Church
Respondents were under no illusions about church. They, like most people today, knew that churches could be shallow, oppressive or spiteful places. Yet, paradoxically, their low opinion may have helped their spiritual journeys. If you expect the worst, you are pleasantly surprised when it isn’t as bad as all that, and stunned when it’s actually good.
And a lot of respondents were stunned. Time and again, they spoke glowingly about the impact that the church, meaning essentially the congregation in which they found themselves, had had on them. There was “something completely different” about church, a “feeling of togetherness and unconditional acceptance”. “They were... the church family in the proper sense,” one young man said.


Overall, Journeys and Stories reminds us that conversion is a complex affair, which defies easy categorisation. Experiences are important. People are important. Ordinary kindness is important. Teaching and prayer are important. And, perhaps above all, the life of a community that somehow offers people a taste, however faint, of the kingdom of God is important.

Journeys and Stories is available from LICC (www.licc.org.uk)



Conclusions from the research, Peter Neilsen, Church of Scotland
1. Never underestimate God at work in little things and in unexpected ways
2. Nurture the qualities of Christian community that attract, transform and sustain people
3. Prepare people to be fellow-Travellers on the spiritual journey
4. Help people engage with the core of the Bible story and its Wisdom
5. Free up ministers to be less frenetic and to have time to be with people