One of my biggest goals in bringing the good news of Jesus to Italy is to make sure not to bring America (and America’s expectations of evangelism and gospel change) along with me. The manifestation and expression of the church in America is deeply interlinked with the history of our country, which is why a new missional focus has emerged within the past few years across the U.S. in order to engage the ever-changing culture which is beginning to take roots in postmodernism and political correctness.

To effective engage Italy with the gospel, it’s imperative to understand the history and culture of it’s people.

Jonathan Dodson, in an article of how culture affects conversion, writes:

Gospel change in some cultures is more gradual than instantaneous. The American Evangelical tradition of “deep consciousness of personal sin followed by a sense of joyous liberation” is not common to all cultures. Missionaries labored for years before they saw a single conversion, and even then, the conversions were sometimes very different than what they expected. Cultures that are more communal experience conversion differently that cultures that are highly individualistic. In many African and Asian cultures, conversions come in pairs or families instead of by single individuals. Not all gospel change happens identically, especially across cultures.

Although my personal conversion experience was similar to the one that Dodson explains above (deep conviction of sin followed by sense of joyous freedom in Christ), I agree with Dodson that my expectation for others should not be a replication of my own conversion, but rather to trust the work of the Spirit who reveals the truth about the death and resurrection of Christ through the scriptures.

Our goal should not be to replicate our personal conversion experience, but to preach the gospel effectively so that we can make disciples in the emerging post-Christian context. We must heed the failures of the past and call people, not to our experience of conversion, but to the experience of the Spirit’s converting, whatever that process may entail.