Workshop 3: Witness

technorati tags
faithful practices, youth ministry

Lesleigh Carmichael - Witness

What comes to mind?
how we came to know the lord
gospel choirs
some do it silently (some wear t-shirts)
there are a variety of ways to do testimony.

we all have a story to tell, we need to tell our story, everyday we add a new chapter to the story of God and his people
sometimes our testimony may not agree, and that's OK - it happens in Scripture, too.

who are the characters in our stories? our editors, our writers...
we don't always choose our characters (david didn't choose goliath), and we need to not be afraid to name those characters we wouldn't choose.

the rest of the session we did 2 exercises: first, we created a list of characters in our individual story of faith (to this point in our life), describing them by name or description, and making a few quick notes about their impact. this was to be a tool to help develop our "testimony" as if writing it as a script or short story.

the second activity was to draw a timeline of our story, however we thought that ought to look. we each had a 6x6 inch piece of off-white canvas and a marker. some used words, some made charts and graphs (the engineers in the house), some used symbols, some had a fairly straight line, and others had spirals, or mountains and valleys. we then attached each individual piece to each others and ended up with a sort of banner or flag of testimonies.

a good exercise in finding ways to explore and express our own stories, and it's something that can translate over into work with youth (or adults, for that matter) quite well.