Somehow, someway, conversion has become a bad word in our culture.  "We aren't into converting people" is a very cool mantra, it's just not biblical.  Paul used the word often in the New Testament, as here in Romans 16:5, "Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first CONVERT to Christ in the province of Asia."  In the spiritual realm, conversion is simply the act of becoming something new, which is exactly what Jesus promises when he says that repentence and belief lead to regeneration, or being made new.  So I am very into converting people.  I am into seeing people have allegience to this world and change their allegience to Jesus and be converted.  I am into people being converted from the worship of other gods to the worship of the one, true God - Jesus. 

But many 'emergent' believers like to back off the whole concept of conversion because this is what gets us into trouble.  I remember traveling to India years ago to the city of Hyderabad.  We arrived one week after a local evangelical pastor had been killed by Hindu fundamentalists.  It was interesting because in this particular area there was a majority population of Hindus, then a large minority population of Muslims (about 30%), then a small minority of Catholic Christians (1-2%), and just a smattering of Evangelical Christians well below 1%.  So why was the evangelical pastor targeted by the Hindu extremist and not the Muslims or the Catholics?  It is simple . . . he worked to convert Hindus (and Muslims for that matter) to Evangelical Christianity, he considered this to be his duty and his delight.  Muslims, on the other hand, had no interest in converting Hindus to Islam, and Hindus had no interest in converting the Muslims to Hinduism.  As for the Catholic Christians, more often than not, they were also content to simply minister to the needs of historically Catholic families in the area.  But the very word 'evangelical' means one who is active in evangelizing, which means to verbally speak the good news about Jesus and exhort others to be 'converted' from whatever they currently are into a devoted follower of Jesus. 

This is the part of our faith that gets us into trouble and distinguishes us from other religions which are content to sustain themselves by simple biological growth rather than through conversion growth.  But our marching orders are different, for Jesus said go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every living creature and ask them to follow Me at all cost, and it often cost a lot.  I just read this article about one of our brothers and his 15 year old daughter in Egypt (pictured above).  He is currently living on the run and being persecuted for converting from Islam into Christianity.  Amazingly enough, in Egypt one can legally convert from Christianity into Islam in one week, but it is ILLEGAL to convert from Islam into Christianity, period.  This is a big deal because your religion is stamped into your passport and it determines whom you can marry, where you can worship, where you can study and where you will be buried.  Nevertheless, even in such harsh conditions, it is our duty to convert all men into worshipers of Jesus.  Actually, it is not our duty, it is our delight, as nothing is more energizing than seeing one more human being receive total forgiveness through Jesus.  So let's pursue the conversion of all men at all cost, it is our delight.