Which stories do you probably read first in a newspaper? Usually those about people? Most people are interested in other people
rather than abstract ideas. The newspaper dictum is: "People want to read about people." Think of the example of the Lord Jesus. The thrust of His evangelistic preaching was not scripture exposition at all,
but stories usually about people - parables - often with a great deal of humor.
Jim Watkins writes in
"...being able to visualize a message makes it more persuasive. When Christ became flesh and dwelt among us, He made abstract truth visible.
- We can't see God's balance of mercy and judgement. But we can see Christ saving an adulterous woman from stoning.
- We can't see man's lack of purpose without God. But we can see lost sheep.
- We can't see a loving, caring God. But we can see Christ crucified.
- Christ's life not only revealed God, but His illustrations put flesh on eternal truth. Rather than trying to explain faith,
He pointed to mustard seeds and the hills of Galilee. Sin became visible as weeds and infectious yeast.
- Rather than preaching a five-point sermon on hypocrisy, Christ spoke of whitewashed tombs, filled with dead men's bones and everything unclean.
Hypocrites were poisonous snakes. These "word pictures" pack more truth than thousands of words. We can see whitewashed tombs. We can smell putrid flesh."
Human interest stories are an essential
part of evangelism. Few people are interested in abstract truth. Testimonies can be a key part of an evangelistic web-site. Only
don't
call them that - it's a churchy
jargon word! Call them true stories, life experiences, case studies, or something similar.
The book of Acts records Paul telling of his own conversion three times. No doubt he told it many more times in his ministry.
Not for church consumption
Testimonies for an evangelistic web/printed page, must
not be written in the style
that testimonies are usually given in a church service, indeed they should be light-years away in style and content. You know, the kind that starts with "I was/was not
brought up in a Christian family". Because the audience are not Christians, their interests and viewpoint are totally different. Who cares about the religious background of your family?
Sadly, this vital distinction is often not appreciated, and many wonderful testimonies lose much of their power to communicate to non-Christians.
We cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of slanting a testimony towards the non-Christian reader. This requires not only the brutal elimination of evangelical jargon,
but the ability to write from an angle that the non-Christian can empathize with. You are not writing to be a blessing and encouragement to Christians!
Testimonies should read like newspaper or magazine features. Although usually written in the form of a "first
person" story by the person themselves, they can be alternatively be rewritten as feature articles with someone else telling
the story and using many quotes from the subject. Interviews are possible too, but may not work so well on a web-page because
they tend to take a lot of words to communicate the same amount of information.
Pictures and reality
Use a picture if you can. Is there a photo available of the subject? Alternatively a distance shot of anyone, or anything which relates to a component of the testimony,
will make the page far more attractive and help people to identify with the story.
The more 'real' details given about the person - who they are, what they do, where they live and if possible what
they look like - the better people will remember the story. You will probably know that memory techniques work by building up a
visual images in the mind for quicker recall. So the more memorable these apparently non-essential details of the
testimony are, the more likely people are to remember the whole story, especially the bottom line - the main message of a changed life.
Warning
It may be wise not to fully identify the subject of a testimony with their last name or other personal details. Permission was withdrawn for the use of a testimony we had on our site - because people had somehow been able to identify the writer, find a telephone
number or email address, and make unwelcome comments.
Rewriting
Be prepared to edit, rewrite, or rework testimonies that you have available, to make them suitable for a non-Christian
reader, because most Christians instinctively write their testimonies with a Christian reader in mind. It is important to have the stories "test-read", by anyone willing to help you, perhaps even by a non-Christian
which might turn the reading into an evangelistic opportunity. As with every type of writing, checking and
revision is essential.
Angie's story
Click here to see our fictional sample testimony about Angie, written in three alternative styles:
- For Christians
- For non-Christians as a first-person testimony
- For non-Christians as a third-person feature article
It is available for reprint (as are all the pages on this site).
Guidelines for testimonies
Level of English
Testimonies should be in reasonably easy English to help site visitors who do not read English as a first language. And for such
world readership, it is can be useful if not all testimonies on a web-site originate from a single country or ethnic background.
Target audience
It is helpful to have a mental picture of your target reader. Remember, reading is not a group
activity. You are writing for one reader at a time, not preaching to a congregation.
Picture in your mind a notional reader with real needs and interests, and a total lack of understanding and
zero knowledge of the Christian faith. Then write at that level.
How to start
Build up picture of yourself - "who, what, where, when, why".
Don't start off immediately by talking about God, or
your conversion. Create an interesting picture of your pre-conversion life and problems, and
then start to explain
what began to create a need and interest in Christian things.
Use an angle
Angle your testimony to show how knowing God helps you with any major problem in
life: loneliness, fear, worry, debt, suicide, relationships, any form of sex problem, or addiction, alcohol, drugs, student life and exams, lack of purpose in life.
Inner feelings
Try to share what your inner feelings were like before your conversion. Think back, what did you really feel in those days?
How did you look at the world? Did you feel alone, empty, threatened, no sense of direction? Or did you feel you could
handle it all? The people who read your story must be able to identify with you somehow. They cannot identify with
the way you feel now. They are unlikely to be much interested that you believe you have eternal life, or relate to your
personal faith of itself. But they can identify with the way you used to feel, and to learn what
practical answers there might be for their lives right now. And if you used to feel that Christians were stupid, misguided, pompous
or whatever - say so - they may be able to identify with those feelings too!
Honesty. "No more Mr Nice Guy"
Please don't write a "triumphal" testimony. If you really were completely set free from
drugs, fear, depression, whatever - OK say so. But most of us, most of the time, still struggle with things we always struggled with. The
difference is - we have a Friend to help in the struggle. If you have still have bad times and difficulties in any area, be
honest and say so. Exaggerated testimonies are common, but they don't ring true. ("Evang-elastic" they have been called!)
This is one area where we don't copy the press and the tabloid maxim: "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story."
What you must make clear is that you have found real help for those issues. Painting a picture of your life as some sort of totally-together paradise will
be as off-putting and condemning to people as those TV adverts where a perfect family relate together in a perfect way in a perfect kitchen.
Do not feel that you are somehow dishonoring the Lord by sharing that you still have struggles. On the contrary,
not presenting yourself as 'goody two-shoes' will endear your message to readers.
Writer Beverley Caruso comments on her experience as a pastor's wife:
"By hiding my own shortcomings from [the young women I was ministering to], I robbed them of seeing how a believer overcomes. When I intentiomally let them see that I wasn't perfect,
they expressed a greater desire to learn from me. This concept applies to our writing as well."
Your old religion
If you belonged to a different religion before becoming a Christian, try to explain how that religion did not satisfy you,
while at the same time showing respect for those who still hold to that faith. It may be better not to mention the name of
the religion, certainly not in a critical way. This avoids unnecessarily upsetting (and therefore losing) those still in that religion and also helps people of
other faiths to identify with your experience too. If you had a Christian background before conversion, try to explain how your
previous outward observance is different from what you have now, without seeming to write off the church you belonged to.
Avoid all religious jargon
Avoid the use of
religious words or anything that gives the testimony a "churchy,
religious" feel. Even use "meeting" instead of "service", "speaker" instead of "minister",
etc. Remember, you are not selling a religion, but offering a relationship which meets their
felt or unrealized needs.
Writes Mario, a web evangelist in Brazil:
"One thing I am taking care to avoid in stories are names of religions, pastors, churches, etc. People are tired of religion and many unbelievers avoid anything that looks like organized religion. So sometimes, instead of writing, 'He went to the First Baptist Church to listen to a sermon given by the pastor', I would change it for something like, 'He went to a meeting room where somebody was teaching about the Bible.'"
Direct speech
Consider including direct speech in quotes, because it is much more immediate and real. For instance, it would sound much better to
write,
"My friend Cheryl came round and said, 'I have a book for you that I think you would enjoy.'"
If this was written using indirect reported speech, it would have much less impact:
"My friend Cheryl came round and said that she had a book for
me that she thought I would enjoy."
This does raise the question - how can you attempt to accurately quote extracts of conversation that perhaps
took place years ago? This literary issue has been satisfactorily addressed by John and Elizabeth Sherrill, who co-wrote
The Hiding Place with Corrie ten Boom. They believe that to tell a story effectively, it must use the same techniques that would make a novel readable -
including direct speech. And that furthermore, a direct speech quotation, even though it is not necessarily the exact words used at the time,
is in fact paradoxically more "true" than a vague suggestion as to what might have been said! In the English language, to use lots of
reported indirect speech is clumsy and boring, with so much use of "said that"
and the changes in verb tense needed. Bible translators of course, always use direct speech, which makes for easy and understandable
reading - even though the distinction between direct and indirect speech does not exist in Biblical Hebrew and Greek.
There are some long testimonies very effectively written using this technique in the book
Telling Others - The Alpha Initiative by Nicky Gumbel.
Correcting misunderstandings
The world has many misconceptions about what a Christian really is. The common assumption is that being a Christian involves attempting to follow some predefined list of rules, not doing all sorts of other things, and
never having fun - all for the sake of hoping that good deeds will outweigh bad and get you into some sort of wishy-washy boring after-life.
People of other faiths carry many additional misunderstandings too.
Try to correct such wrong ideas as you write a testimony. If these (or other things) were your personal misconceptions, explain sensitively how you found you were wrong.
Not always chronological
It is not necessarily always best to tell your story following the chronological order of events.
Reader's Digest and
Guideposts usually structure a personal story like this:
- Lead anecdote: humorous or key incident in life
- Present status: what person is doing now
- Big flashback - the newsworthy situation (in our case - finding Jesus)
- Closing anecdote: often relating to person's present attitude to past events
Note how this does not follow the order in which things happened. Stories based on the calendar of events often give equal space to significant and unimportant experiences. Every time you read a personal story in a magazine, observe what structure they have used.
Check how these techniques have been used in our testimony tutorial
Angie's story.
The secret weapon
Testimonies are your church's secret and under-used resource. My ministry founder believed that every
church service should have a testimony. Every church newsletter and magazine distributed in your neighborhood
could be improved with the addition of testimonies that are winsome and well-written. You have a church of people to draw on.
Written along the lines suggested here, in secular terms for a secular audience, you have something far more potent than the
standard Easter/Harvest/Christmas homily we often distribute in our neighborhoods. Use a photo of the writer too!
Testimonies are a valuable addition to any
church web-site.
More testimony resources
These sites invite you to submit your testimony to them:
Dictionaries
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