Saying Is Believing

The Necessity of Testimony in Adolescent Spiritual Development

Amanda Hontz Drury

• Editore: IVP Academic
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780830897018
• Argomento: Theology & Religion
• Categoria: Christian Ministry

"I have seen and I testify..." (John 1: 34) The idea of giving one's testimony often evokes summer church camps, evangelistic revivals, mission trips and baptisms. Like an eyewitness called to testify in a courtroom, sharing a testimony of faith is for specific people at special moments. But what if our view of testimony is all wrong? According to Amanda Drury, testimony is not merely about describing something that happened in the past. It is a practice that forms our present and future identity. Testimony changes us, and without it we risk having a stunted and stale faith. Drawing on work in sociology, psychology and theology, Drury develops an understanding of testimony as an essential practice for Christian spiritual formation, especially for adolescents who are in the process of developing their identity. Recent studies reveal a staggering inability for adolescents to articulate their religious beliefs. Now more than ever, churches need to recover the practice of testimony as an integral part of communal worship.

1

Testimony

An Introduction

As [Jesus] was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus refused, and said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.

Mark 5:18-20

As a child, I always entered the sanctuary hoping to see microphones in the aisles. A microphone in the aisle meant that we would be hearing from more than the pastor during that service. A microphone in the aisle meant there would be space in the service for an individual to stand up and share carte blanche what was on her heart. While you never knew what might happen, there was a certain level of predictability. If Mrs. Goodman was present, there would be tears along with references to a difficult childhood. If Mr. Copper was present, we would hear a quasi-prophetic rant with a call to a deeper life of holiness. I remember ragged breathing into a corded, portable microphone with a large ball-like muffler as the speaker summoned the courage to tackle the monster of public speaking. Every once in a while a child my age would stand and make a rapid-fire statement publicly praising a godly mother, often prompting sentimental feelings from the listeners. While I heard stories of freedom from addictions in the past, I don’t recall any dramatic confessions of present entanglements in sordid circumstances; of course, one could always hope.

Testimonies were exhilarating to my child’s mind. You never knew what was going to happen. Anyone could stand up and say anything. If we were lucky we would get a fresh story about someone from the church that had a torrid past from which he or she had found freedom. Drugs, alcohol, some had even been in jail. Of course, these testimonies were not the norm. Most testimonies consisted of small blessings people had seen that week. Others were more akin to prayer requests with a confession of belief tagged on at the end. So a woman might stand up and speak of her wayward child and end with something along the lines of, “But I know that God will be faithful and I’m trusting he will intervene.” Then there were those testimonies that were simple pronouncements of thankfulness: “I just want to thank the Lord,” some would say, “for . . .” and then they would fill in the blank with wherever they sensed the presence of God the week before.

A microphone in the aisle was a symbol of excitement for my eight-year-old mind. A microphone in the aisle was a symbol of terror for my father, who was pastor. A microphone in the aisle meant one thing: it was time to testify.

My exhilaration was also due in part to fear. Not knowing who was going to speak nor what was going to be said, I always had a small fear that someone was going to stand up and publicly critique my father, the head pastor. This never happened to my recollection (though he might say otherwise), but even at a young age I was very aware of the possibility of someone hijacking a service.

I recently asked my father about the anxiety surrounding the unknown testimonies. He could not help but laugh and explain, “It’s kinda like that old Forrest Gump line where he’s sitting at the bus bench and he says to the lady, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.’”1 He elucidates: “Whenever we’ve held open-mic testimonies for whoever wished to share, it was oftentimes a hold-your-breath experience because some people saw it as an opportunity to tell a story that probably edified no one but themselves.”2

I remember a childhood conversation with my father about a particular congregant who had a tendency to testify at every opportunity. “Why does she always cry?” I asked my dad. I do not remember his exact answer, but I do remember picking up on some annoyance in his voice. Looking back I have little doubt this annoyance was probably properly directed toward what was most likely an emotionally charged, tangential testimony with little edification taking place.

Also exciting were the believers’ baptismal testimonies given just prior to immersion. These testimonies produced less anxiety for me as a listener because I knew they were written out ahead of time and gone over with a pastor on staff. I still have my own baptismal testimony written out in pencil on the front and back of a three-by-five card from when I was ten years old. Again, I was drawn toward the dramatic, sensational stories where grown men with shaking hands and voice would describe their lives before surrendering to the Lord. Many spoke of former addictions or of lives steeped in anger. Many also spoke of being raised by godly parents but deciding to run away from God in their teenage years. I remember hearing these prodigal son stories and thinking, I’m still going to love God when I’m a teenager, no matter what. At a very young age I was given a road map of potential pitfalls in the Christian life: avoid drugs and alcohol, and do not get pulled away by “the wrong crowd.” Of course, there were those peers of mine who heard these same testimonies and assumed it meant they could live wild lives as teenagers and still have the opportunity to “come back to the Lord” after they became adults.

Space for testimonies was also given following a missions trip or a youth camp. Often the church had offered financial support for these endeavors, and testifying was a way in which the congregants could hear how their giving helped fund some ministry outside of our own four walls.

It was sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s that our church began to move from spontaneous testimonies to those that were more ordered and planned. The microphones in the aisles were saved primarily for church business meetings in case a congregant had a question about the budget. The church was experiencing significant growth which made overseeing spontaneous testimonies more and more difficult.

Baptismal testimonies underwent their own transition. We moved from live testimonies to videotaped and edited testimonies that were shown on large screens. The church explored alternate creative ways to share testimonies—particularly when baptisms were moved to Lake Michigan or to the church’s large outdoor pond where sound amplification was an issue. Sunday mornings would occasionally have those being baptized walk across the stage holding up large signs. One side of the sign described life without Christ, the other side described life with Christ. So a man might walk across with a poster that read “Addicted” on one side and “Freed” on the other. Another woman might have “Bitter” written on one side of her poster and “Peaceful” on the other. I remember this being a very moving scene to witness. These people were later celebrated with a picnic dinner prior to being baptized outside. Those wanting to hear more of their testimonies could pick up a small booklet to read their testimonies at length.

The church still practices testifying apart from what takes place at baptisms, but even these testimonies are quite different than what I remember from my childhood. Many of these testimonies are given on Sunday mornings—either via video or in what might be described as “testimonial interviews” where a member of the pastoral staff will pre-arrange for a congregant to join him or her on stage to answer a few questions about where and how God has been at work in his or her life.

It was not until much later in my life that I realized the stories I heard as an eight-year-old were more than descriptive narratives of the speaker’s past; these stories were actually forming our present and future selves.

These early, formative experiences at my church planted a seed, which grew into a hunch and eventually developed into the heart of this book: the role and function of testimony plays an integral part in the spiritual formation of adolescents. It was not until much later in my life that I realized the stories I heard as an eight-year-old were more than descriptive narratives of the speaker’s past; those stories were actually forming our present and future selves. Those who testified were doing more than describing; they were constructing.

In the past, I understood testifying in the most rudimentary terms: a testimony was a story someone told about her experience with God. Testimonies, in my mind, were largely descriptive narratives of something that occurred in the past. What I didn’t realize, however, was that the testimonies shared went beyond mere description and moved into the realm of construction. People were not just describing the past; people were being changed as they spoke. And this kind of construction was not just present for the speaker; those of us receiving the testimony were also being formed.

The following chapters draw from various narrative theories of the social sciences to support this claim. When an individual is able to articulate where and how he understands God to be present in his life, this articulation can serve as a kind of legitimating apparatus, and one’s description of God’s presence in the past may help bolster one’s present faith. Again, this kind of buttressing can be present not only for the speaker but also for those on the receiving end of the testimony.

The emergence of adolescence is an ideal time for this kind of articulation to be cultivated. It is in these early adolescent years that most individuals begin to understand their lives in storied, historic terms. As clinical psychologist Daniel McAdams states, there is a “development of formal thought and the emergence of a historical perspective of the self.”3

This pairing of the adolescent construction of the self with articulacy theories surrounding the practice of testifying is of particular interest to me especially in light of the various reports concerning teenagers, articulacy and faith retention as presented by Christian Smith and Melinda Denton in the National Study on Youth and Religion as well as the findings behind the “sticky faith” research out of Fuller Seminary. This articulacy theory of testimony is a timely and important concept to highlight particularly as these national studies are revealing staggering reports of religious inarticulacy among adolescents growing up within the church.

Painting in broad strokes, one could say testifying tends to be more prevalent in particular ecclesial circles. I was not surprised to find strands of this practice in my Wesleyan Methodist tradition, nor in various Pentecostal or certain African American churches. You could say that testify­ing runs in my ecclesial blood—or at least, it did. There is anecdotal evidence of the practice of testifying diminishing as local churches found themselves in more respectable, professional settings. As clergy became more professionalized, the practice of testifying seemed to dwindle. Why put a microphone in front of a layperson when we have a highly educated pastor to speak on our behalf?

My home church is somewhat of an anomaly in that they still testify in one form or another. Many churches that have historically practiced testifying now shy away from this practice, throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater as ministerial positions become more professionalized. Given that, it was curious for me to observe the decline of testifying in more evangelical settings and the testimony’s subsequent emergence in more mainline settings. Reverend Lillian Daniel of First Congregational Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is a prime example of the latter. Her experience at Church of the Redeemer in New Haven, Connecticut, shared in her book Tell It Like It Is, paints a clear picture of what the practice of testimony looks like in a more mainline setting, as does Thomas Long’s Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian.4

Regardless of the ebb and flow of testifying, what is clear is that this practice is in no way limited to a particular branch of Christian faith, nor is it limited to a particular age. In fact, in my own tradition, while the role of testifying has diminished in the overall life of the church, there have been pockets of testimonial resurgence among some teenagers. One of these pockets is at City Life Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a church that provides space for young and old to testify. Jovhana is one of those teenagers with a story to share.

Jovhana’s Testimony

It was the second Sunday of Advent. Jovhana stood with the congregation of City Life Church as they sang carols. She listened to announcements concerning the Christmas cards for local prisoners. She made mental notes of the times of the upcoming Christmas services. She listened to the children’s choir sing their slightly off rendition of “Gentle Mary, Humble Mary.” Offering was taken, a sermon preached, and then it was Jovhana’s turn.

Her youth pastor introduced her as she walked on stage and picked up the microphone, “Early in my life I was passed around from my mother to my father,” she began.5 “I really didn’t have a stable home, and suddenly I was in foster care because my mom was said to be an ‘unfit parent.’ I was only one year old. I stayed in foster care for two years. I don’t remember much, but eventually I was adopted.”6 The congregation was silent, captivated with her story.

Jovhana went on to explain the emotional struggles that went along with these rocky transitions: “I felt as though I had no one. . . . I was hurting. I guess I didn’t feel God’s presence. I was angry, scared and completely insecure.”

And then, in front of sixty people, Jovhana described a youth group experience where she first became cognizant of God’s love. This realization, she claims, was life-changing: “I was filled with love! And all my feelings of hatred toward myself were somehow forgotten in that moment.”7

Jovhana was about to be baptized, and she wanted her church family to hear the story that brought her to the water. City Life was a six-year-old church plant in the middle of inner-city Grand Rapids. The 130 congregants who attended both services could not be more diverse. Mixed within the suburban families were prostitutes and addicts. The church was strategically planted near the largest mission of the area, which meant City Life had a large population of congregants who could name their home church but not a home address. This was Jovhana’s church. And although her earthly family was not there to witness her baptism, she had found another family within the church’s four walls. And so on the second Sunday of Advent, speaking to her church family in her gray T-shirt and black sweatpants, preparing to be immersed into the horse trough that served the young congregation as a baptismal font, Jovhana told her story.

She announced she wanted to be baptized because she wanted “God to recognize me making that huge step.” She saw it as her way of saying, “Okay, here I am Lord! Have your way with me.”8 Jovhana claims she was extremely nervous as she walked to the stage. Her nerves melted away, however, the more she spoke. Her voice strength...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Testimony: An Introduction
• 2 Faithful Words Prompt Faithful “Reality”
• 3 What We Say Is Who We Are: Articulating Identity Through Narrative
• 4 A Theology of Testimony
• 5 Testimony in Practice: Toward a Practical Theology
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Name and Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Praise for Saying Is Believing
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press