Surprise Testimonials

On Sunday mornings this summer our church had a series of surprise testimonials during class time on Sunday mornings. It was partially modeled after something Lisa's church used to do on Wednesday nights when she was growing up. This is how I explained it when I asked people to participate:

Each Sunday a different member will give a surprise testimonial. The person will basically tell his/her life story...his background, how he grew up, what she does for a living, how he came to follow Christ, etc. Though not essential, the speaker is encouraged to highlight any spiritual insights/decision points/transitions that she has arrived at during her journey. If you're comfortable doing so, please also spend some time discussing any struggles that you consider to have been your toughest moments; for example, addictions, marriage difficulties, financial struggles, challenges in raising children, loss of loved ones, etc.. Since you're the world's leading expert on the subject of your talk (you and your life), it shouldn't require too much planning or preparation...maybe just a little thinking about what the main events and thoughts will be. If the audience is curious about anything, they can ask. You can answer or not. You'll have about 30 to 40 minutes. If you don't use all the available time, that's OK...the remainder will be spent as social time. This is intended to accomplish a couple things: 1) The more we know about each other and our backgrounds and struggles, the tighter our bond to each other will be. The more we'll be comfortable leaning on each other and depending on each other as together we follow Christ. The less likely we'll be to succumb to divisions when difficulties arise. A few of us may know everything about everybody, but most of us don't. Some of us are relatively new. Some of us have been here a while but still may not know some people as well as we'd like to know them. 2) To the extent that we can be more open and sharing about our struggles in the past, we make ourselves available to minister to someone else who is going through something similar now. Maybe someone is struggling in their relationship with God right now because she has a spouse that pulls her in a very different direction. Maybe you've been through the same thing in the past and could really minister to her effectively...but you don't know that she has that struggle and she doesn't know that you've been through a similar situation...so she doesn't know that you're the person she needs to talk to. Perhaps we can use this summer of surprise testimonials to make some of those connections.

It turned out pretty great. Folks seemed to really like it. I definitely did. I had I little trouble getting people to agree to do it. I'd say maybe a half to a third of the people I asked agreed to speak. I missed a couple of weeks on vacation, but all of the speakers I saw did a great job.

• Someone told the church for the first time that he was/is suffering from prostate cancer.
• Someone described his continuing struggle with OCD.
• Someone described being in a mentally and physically abusive marriage
• Someone described how she responded with hope when her son was shot and killed
• Someone described how he felt on the day he participated in failed effort to rescue people on the Edmund Fitzgerald
• Someone described how he felt awkward and out of place growing up until he finally found his niche in college.
• Someone confessed to excessive drinking and to using drugs in college
• Someone else confessed to using and selling drugs as a teenager
• Someone described how she dealt with having a husband who suddenly began refusing to go to church and refusing to talk about it
• More than one person mentioned his discomfort when he's having a beer at a restaurant and sees someone from church (since he doesn't know for sure what the "rules" are related to that).

It was exactly what I had in mind. I think I'll try to make it a recurring summertime series...if enough people will agree to speak.