Welcome to the Gospel Coalition podcast, where we help to renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel.

Today's podcast is a conversation between Ligand Duncan and Michael Lawrence on the nature of Christian

conversion. It was recorded at our 2025 National Conference. We are here today to talk about

conversion, and my conversation partner has written a book on conversion, which you should get a

hold of. It's in the Nine Mark series, and it's just

called Conversion. And my conversation partner is Dr. Michael Lawrence of the Henson Baptist Church

in Portland, Oregon. And Michael, we've known one another for like 25 years or more. I mean,

a long time. At least, yeah. We met through Mark Devere, yeah, who's at Capitol Hill Baptist

Church in Washington, D.C. But Michael went to Gordon Conwell with some friends of mine. We had

mutual friends back then. I'm Liggin Duncan, and I'm the Chancellor and CEO of Reform

Theological Seminary. I was a Presbyterian pastor for 17 years,

and then I've, for the last 12 or so years, I've been the Chancellor of the Seminary. So we're

going to have a conversation about conversion today. That's right. Now, Michael is also

written on the topic of biblical theology, and that is going to come into play. But I want to start out with some definitions.

Sure. So obviously we're at

the gospel coalition, national conference. We all care about conversion. So what is conversion?

What is conversion? It's a great question. Conversion is a word that we're all familiar with.

I mean, conversion just means changing from one thing to another thing. So we convert currency,

you know, from dollars to pounds or pounds to dollars. People convert from being Republicans

to Democrats or Democrats to Republican. I have family members who have converted to vegetarianism.

In one sense, that's all conversion is. It is changing from one thing to another thing.

But Christian conversion, we understand to be unique and different from all of those other kinds of changes that people make, which are basically just lifestyle choices.

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