“Could you tell me your story,” I often ask people these days.
I am specifically asking people from a particular background to tell me their stories of coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ. It’s part of a project I’m doing for college. I am already learning lots, even before conducting formal interviews.
The stories I am hearing are gripping, challenging and memorable. The tales of these particular sisters and brothers in Christ are much more interesting than mine.
Thinking about this topic has motivated me to write this blog post. Writing it up helps me to process a little of the mish-mash of thoughts muddled in my mind at the moment. Thanks for reading along, and so giving me purpose for writing.
The power of stories
Stories are powerful. Consider television advertisements, for example. Can you think of an appealing advertisement which does not contain a story of some sort? Do you have a ‘favourite advertisement’?
On Australian TV these days, I sometimes watch a story of a child who loses her toy rabbit on a day out. The father drives his fancy car here, there and everywhere with the bereft girl in the back seat, trusting her daddy to find the toy. As it turns out, the mother finally realises that she had it in her bag all along, but she decides to let the father think that he had found it and so be the hero. The whole story is beautifully portrayed in the space of 30 seconds. Even though I don’t care about cars, I am impressed by the car (a Toyota Hilux) which covers beautiful and sometimes rugged terrain as the patient daddy looks for his little girl’s toy rabbit.
(For the sake of appropriately acknowledging intellectual ownership, I should probably reference the Toyota Hilux story summarised in the paragraph above – you too can watch it here .)
The advertising world uses stories to persuade us to part with our money in ways which suit their shareholders. How much more should we use stories to share things that are important to us and which we want so badly for our family and friends too. I am thinking, of course, about faith.
Hence this focus on stories of how people came to saving faith in Jesus.
The structure of stories
A good story, we are told, follows a standard pattern, sometimes termed ‘a narrative arc’.
The beginning of a good story introduces key characters and the setting. Think of the line, “Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a beautiful princess….”.
As the story progresses, tension and conflict are introduced. The tension builds up and climaxes with some sort of crisis. Think of the line, “Then the wicked stepmother imprisoned the beautiful princess in a castle turret.”
The story moves on to describe how the crisis was managed. It finishes with a resolution and all details neatly tied up. Think of the line, “The beautiful princess and her handsome prince lived happily ever after.”
For generations, storytellers have been following this sort of a pattern as they keep listeners spellbound.
“Has anybody got a testimony?”
When I was growing up, it was quite common for somebody to get up during church to ‘give a testimony’. Usually these were stories of how God had intervened in an individual’s life in some way or another. Even as a child, I would sit up and pay attention when it came time for testimonies.
Testimonies specifically about how God drew an individual or family to himself are called ‘conversion narratives’ in the literature. The were especially popular in churches in the 17th and 18th centuries, hence having a name of their own in academia – the genre of ‘conversion narratives’.
Back then, as now, stories were powerful.
These days, I hesitate to use the word ‘conversion’ when I ask for people’s stories. It is politically sensitive in some parts of the world, while in my own country, ‘conversion’ is often used to describe people’s process of transitioning from one sexual orientation to another these days
So I shall continue to ask people, “Tell me the story of your journey to saving faith in Jesus.”
A famous ‘conversion narrative’
A well known story of someone’s journey to saving faith in Jesus is that of the New Testament character, Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus. His story grabs my imagination.
Do you remember that ‘narrative arc’, described earlier? Here is how it plays out in the story of the apostle Paul.
The start: Once upon a time, there was a fanatically religious Pharisee with a very good heritage named Saul.
Rising tension: Saul used to persecute Christians and even had them imprisoned and killed in his efforts to keep Judaism ‘pure’.
Climax: While travelling, a blinding light shone around him and a voice from heaven – Jesus’ voice – spoke. Saul’s fixed ideas about Jesus were suddenly shattered.
Resolving the tension: Saul / Paul was blinded but led to Damascus where a Christian was sent to help him understand what had happened, baptise him and heal him.
Resolution: Instead of persecuting Christians, Saul / Paul became a famous Christian missionary.
Isn’t that an inspiring story? My story is nothing like that.
NOT a famous ‘conversion narrative’
Like me, the early church leader, Timothy, did not have a compelling story of coming to faith in Jesus.
Timothy’s story of coming to faith in Jesus was more of a gently rising line than an arc. Consider this:
The start: Once upon a time, a baby boy, Timothy, was born to a fervent Christian woman.
Rising tension: As Timothy matured into a young man, he demonstrated through his life that he accepted the faith of his mother and grandmother as his own.
Crisis: What crisis?
The apostle Paul would later write to this young leader, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.” (2 Timothy 1:5 NIV) When Paul first met Timothy, the young man was already known as ‘a disciple’ … a disciple “whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. The believers … spoke well of him….” (Acts 16:1,2 NIV).
Timothy’s ‘conversion narrative’ didn’t have the ‘narrative arc’ of a good story.
Timothy had some good stories, mind you, of how God worked in his life – just not stories of how he became a disciple of Jesus. There was the time that Paul laid hands on him and God did something special in his life (2 Timothy 1:6). Then there was the time that Paul circumcised Timothy to pacify overly sensitive Jews (Acts 16:3). There is lots to learn from these stories.
“Tell me the story of how you came to saving faith in Jesus,” someone might have asked Timothy. I wonder if he ever wished for a story more akin to that of the passionate apostle Paul than his own.
A wish not granted
When I was younger, I used to wish for an impressive ‘testimony’ to tell people about how I came to saving faith in Jesus. But God saw fit to deny me my wish.
As I listen to the stories of people I am currently talking with for my study purposes, my heart aches. Many have experienced chapters of abandonment and despair in their life stories. Life can be cruel. Thank God that he turned their lives around, often by surrounding them with his people who loved and supported them.
In contrast, my story is more like Timothy’s. Raised in a loving home, taught to know and love God from infancy, my story was ‘boring’. “God has no grandchildren,” adults would say at the time. As a child, then, I made a personal commitment to Jesus, and tried to tell my little friends at school about it the next day. Being a good Baptist girl, there was a church service some years later in which I was immersed in water as a public declaration of my decision to follow Jesus.
That was my story. There wasn’t any real crisis or point of desperate need. It’s not a gripping story.
My heritage is godly. My childhood was calm. And now, as I look back on it, I am so very grateful.
Stories to tell
Having a boring ‘conversion narrative’ does not mean that I don’t have a good story to tell. On the contrary – I have decades worth of stories to tell of God’s gentle transforming work in my life, of his generous provision to me, and of ways he has ‘shown up’ in quite special ways here and there. You probably do too.
Some of those stories from recent years appear on this blog site, and others are on the blog I kept through my cancer journey several years ago now. I hope they encourage and challenge you, a reader. The telling of these tales certainly helps me.
Stories are powerful. People forget facts … at least I do … but stories with strong characters and an interesting plot linger.
May God use our stories to encourage and challenge other people, just as he uses the stories of others to build us up.
Does anyone have a testimony to share? Let’s be story tellers.