The Parking Lot Test

Did you notice?

Someone in your church this Sunday didn’t know how to become a Christian.

Maybe they were sitting next to you. Maybe they were watching during worship, locked in during the sermon, but with something slightly off in their expression — like they were tracking but not quite landing. Like they were standing just outside a door they couldn’t figure out how to open.

And then church ended. Everyone scattered. And the moment passed.

Here’s a question worth sitting with: what would you have said if they had asked you?

What would you say?

I call this “The Parking Lot Test.”

You’re walking to your car after the service. The person you noticed during worship is parked right next to you. They say, “That was great, wasn’t it?” You say something polite. And then, out of nowhere, they say something that stops you cold:

“How do I do that? Be a Christian. Follow Jesus. How does that actually work?”

The ball is teed up. The door is open. What do you say next?

A lot of Christians freeze at this moment — not because they don’t believe, but because they’ve never put the answer into simple words. They know Jesus matters. They’re just not sure how to explain why or what to do about it.

The Answer

The Apostle Paul never had that problem.

In Acts 20, near the end of his third missionary journey, Paul is saying goodbye to the pastors of the church in Ephesus. He knows he’s not coming back. And as he recounts his ministry among them, he describes what he preached — to Jews and Gentiles, in public and in private, through tears and danger and opposition — with striking simplicity:

“Repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Acts 20:21)

That’s it. That’s the answer to the parking lot test.

Repent and believe.

Repent means to turn. Stop walking toward your sin and start walking toward Jesus. It’s not just feeling bad about what you’ve done — it’s a change of direction. A decision to stop living for yourself and start living for him.

Believe means to trust. Not just to agree that Jesus existed, but to put the full weight of your life on who he is and what he did — his perfect life, his death in your place, his resurrection from the dead. To say: that’s my only hope, and I’m betting everything on it.

Paul preached this to everybody. Jews and Gentiles. Religious people and pagans. The sophisticated and the simple. Because it works the same way for everyone. There is no version of becoming a Christian that doesn’t involve turning from sin and trusting Jesus. That’s the whole thing.

Simple, Not Easy

It’s incredibly simple. It’s just not easy.

And that’s exactly why it’s worth knowing cold — so that when someone in a parking lot, or at a family dinner, or in a text message at 11pm asks you how this works, you don’t freeze.

You just tell them the truth Paul spent his life preaching:

Turn away from your sin. Put your faith in Jesus. That’s how you become a Christian.

The door is open. You know what’s on the other side. Don’t let the moment pass.