A Message from our Senior Pastor
Mark Seversen

The Wonder of Conversion

What a great period of change and growth we are in as a church. In the midst of the excitement we long to remain aware of our real objective. While growing numbers and updated facilities may grab your attention (and ours) they cannot distract from our central purpose as a church.  Our purpose is to participate in the conversion of lives. I almost hate to use the word because it has been so misrepresented.

Recently our staff team read an article by John Stackhouse that has helped us keep in focus what this involves. I hope it will be helpful to you as you try to understand what Hillcrest is about. Every time I reread this description of conversion I feel like jumping up and down and shouting “Yes, yes, yes!” So take any necessary precautions before you read it! I hope it stirs your heart and fills you with longing for more and more of what God offers you and others.

“Conversion involves the whole person as one transits from one sort of existence, before knowing Christ, to walking consistently in the Spirit of Christ in every respect. Intellectually, one believes propositions one did not believe before. Morally, one has a different sense of what counts as good and evil, what one ought or ought not to do. Emotionally, one loves what one used to hate or ignore; one shuns former pleasures as toxic and wasteful. One cares about God, other people, the rest of the planet, and oneself in a way one didn’t before. Aesthetically, one finds beauty where one once saw nothing worthwhile at all, or perhaps even something repellent. Spiritually, one is sensitive and open to God, but also to the spiritual needs and gifts of other people. And one highly values the physical world, including one’s body, as God’s good creation.

Christian conversion amounts to a new outlook on everything; a new attitude toward and motivation in everything; and a new relationship toward everyone. Conversion doesn’t mean an entirely new way of life, of course, as if non-Christians know nothing of truth, goodness, and beauty, and nothing of God. But the core of one’s life is now oriented directly toward the worship and service of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus the Christian is, in that fundamental sense, a new person.”