I have heard of a few youth groups providing intentional opportunities for adults to share their story with the group. Sticky Faith (www.stickyfaith.org) has a blog about this, but I have heard of others doing this. It’s not something particularly new. The older generations have been telling their story to the younger generations for millennia. However, in recent years, the usual means of passing on stories (e.g. testimonial services on Sunday nights) within the congregation have all but vanished. My church is finally canceling its Sunday night service due to incredibly low attendance. In reality, however, the younger generations stopped going to Sunday night testimony services years ago. Furthermore, in my experience, many parents do not share their faith journeys with their children. Because of this, I decided to provide intentional opportunities for parents and other adults to share their stories with the teens. This not only helps connect the generations but also helps the teens to formulate their own stories.
Last month, on a “Teen Sunday” (once a month, our Sunday night service is led by myself and the youth group), we had four adults share their stories two the congregation, about 1/4 of which were children or teenagers. Two mothers of teenagers, myself, and our associate pastor all shared our faith journeys. It was absolutely incredibly to hear the stories of the two mothers. I am not sure how much of the story they had shared with their children before this moment (I am going to assume they had!). However, it was my first time hearing it, as well as most of the congregation. And it is a service I will not soon forget.
A couple of Thursday nights ago, we had our first congregation member share his testimony with the teens. He is in his mid 60s and came to know Christ in 2006. As he started sharing his story, the teens sat in complete silence. He shared how he became an alcoholic early in high school. He doesn’t remember anything besides playing football his junior year because of alcohol. His senior year, a caring teacher pulled him aside and told him he was not going to graduate if he did not pull himself together. By the grace of God he did graduate and was able to stay sober for at least a few years. However, the next 40+ years of his life was a struggle with alcohol that got him nowhere. In 2006, his sick and dying son sat him down and told him the truth he needed to hear. His son had become a Christian several years before and shared the Gospel with his father. It was not the first time he had heard about Jesus, but it was the day he chose to live in Christ the rest of his days. When asked to choose one word that described him before he was in Christ and one word for after, he said, “Hell, and Heaven.” Later in his explanation for why these two words, he used the synonyms, “death,” and “life.” After he finished, I told the teens that they have no reason to ever walk by this man at church and not say hi. They know him now, know his story, know his name, and can greet him by name every time they pass him in the foyer.
In one Thursday night, this man shared the Gospel in a more memorable and penetrating way than I have in two years. My teens will remember this story when offered alcohol during high school. They will remember this next time they wonder what the consequences of sin are. They will remember this when formulating their own story about what God has done in their lives. In two weeks, we are having a married couple share about what God has done in their family as they began investing in the work God is doing in Cambodia.
As we begin this process of connecting the generations, our goal is always discipleship. Both the people who share their testimonies and the hearers benefit. Both grow in discipleship. My prayer is that by the time my teenagers leave high school they would be able to formulate how they fit in God’s story, that they would no longer view it as “my story,” but would say this is the story of God and how God has been at work in my life.
Does anybody have stories about sharing stories within their congregation? I would love to hear some ideas.
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