Conversion
What our pastors have said about conversion, drawn from messages preached across our campuses.
In their own words
“disrupt peace, oh, he's coming after my heart. He's going to course correct me when I'm pressed into him. When my eyes are focused on the source of peace. pursuing peace. It can mean having a hard conversation, but it's a conversation laced with grace. It's a conversation where you've had a whole lot of vertical conversation before any horizontal conversation happens”
· Women of Warren Retreat 2026 - The Pursuit of Peace“look like, has one side conversation with somebody that says, have you ever considered church adoption? And that led Alex to some research, which eventually led to a call to our pastor, Dr. David McKinley, April 1st of 2021. This was not an April Fool's joke, but he called him on April Fool's of all times, but he called him and he began to have a conversation about, hey, what would it look like to begin a conversation about Warren adopting First Baptist Church of Belvedere? And as we had that conversation, pastor asked him, hey, well, where are you guys located? I've heard of Belvedere,”
Stephen Newman · Vision Sunday“I've heard one friend of mine put it as praying without ceasing and praying in all circumstances is kind of like having two conversations at once. That everywhere you go in your life, you might be having a horizontal conversation with a person around you, but you're also having a vertical conversation with God through prayer. That you're inviting God into every conversation, into every aspect of your lives. We pursue God in prayer to know his will. Fourth, we seek wise counsel. We seek wise counsel.”
Austin Anderson · Knowing and Doing the Will of God“her employees thinking. And the whole time I'm having to battle these thoughts of what are the people around me thinking about this conversation. And can I tell you guys two things? Number one, her salvation and her eternity is worth so much more than what everybody else around us thinks. If the Lord used that conversation and uses future conversations that we get to have with her on Friday mornings for her eternity to be changed, then it is very worth people thinking that we're weird sitting in Lawful House. And the second thing is, is that that conversation”
Austin Anderson · Unashamed of the Gospel“I pray today would be a day of release. But then I pray today would be a day with a heart of concern and care, that that thing you've been talking to everybody else about, you would actually go to your brother, sister in need and you begin to have a conversation of reconciliation, a conversation of care and concern, a conversation of with gentleness and respect, all in order that they could be made right with God and made right with one another. I pray that we would be this type of people who so see each other through the lens of grace,”
Stephen Newman · Resting Our Gavels of Judgment“statements. They respond and engage way better when we ask and create a conversation rather than just give them the information. And this is something that we preach to our leaders all the time is conversational, non-instructional, conversational, non-instructional. We want to be masters of the art of asking really good questions. Why? So that we can lead students to the truth rather than just tell them what it is. So that we can shepherd them and lead them to the truth”
Riley Blair · The War You Can’t See“well. There are certain times where it is important and necessary to have a conversation. And we might be ready to have that conversation, but the person that we want to share with might not be ready to have that conversation. Maybe it's something heavy, maybe it's something important. But that's where we have to be socially aware to know whether the people in our lives are ready to speak. Do we have enough time to talk about this? Is this a good time to talk about this situation? Are there other people around? Would they want me to talk about this right now? We have to”
· Living Well - People skills“Jesus selected a fishing boat for a pulpit and then he enlisted the people on board to be his first disciples. And I want us to go back now and just look at this text and break this down a little bit and look through the episode of what unfolded and just put the pieces together one by one to understand then and now the significance of this in all of our lives. We begin with the conversation. The conversation. And the key word for the conversation is the word,”
David H. McKinley · Answering the Call to Follow