Look at any magazine rack and you'll see how popular real life stories are. From the lurid – my Mum had an affair with my boyfriend – to the heart-warming – my sister gave me her kidney, it seems that lots of people want to tell us their personal stories and lots more of us want to read them. There's something inspiring about reading how people have faced great challenges and overcome them. And if we're honest, we also love to be shocked and appalled at the excesses of some people's lives.
So it seems natural to take a similar approach when we're teaching the Christian faith – to include lots of real-life stories in order to get people's interest, to inspire them to overcome their problems and to show how our faith affects every part of our lives. Some of the most powerful sermons I have heard have been when the speaker has been open and honest about their own struggles and what God has done in their lives. In fact, sermons without personal stories are dry and theoretical and rarely scratch where people are itching. We don't want to just listen to the theory of how to live the Christian life; we want to know about the encounters with Jesus that people have had and how that has shaped them. Some of the most helpful conversations I have had with other Christians have been when I have realised that they face similar issues to me, but that they have a strong and real faith that helps them persevere. Sharing experiences and testimonies can be really powerful and effective, but they also need to come with a spiritual health warning. So before we look at the ‘how-to', let's just reflect on where it can go wrong.
Don't tell me, show me
I read an article on fatherhood recently where the writer said about his father, ‘He didn't tell me how to live; he lived and let me watch him do it.' Young people will be picking up a huge amount from your life – about the way you handle conflict and disputes, whether you treat all members of the group equally, how you cope when you're stressed and tired, your attitude to the church leaders and so on. Your life speaks volumes already before you tell any stories. In addition, young people are very good at spotting cracks in our integrity. If you say one thing and live out another, they will notice. When we do share our experiences, we need to be honest, not to embellish or manipulate the truth to make ourselves look better.
Embrace failure
A couple of weeks ago I borrowed a friend's car to drive to Liverpool from London. After several hours on motorways, I stopped to fill up with fuel because I was finding it hard to stay awake. Standing at the petrol pumps, grasping the nozzle on automatic pilot, I suddenly realised that I was putting unleaded petrol into a diesel car. Two hours, an AA man, a local mechanic and £125 later, I was on my way again and I reflected on the last words my friend had said to me when I'd left his house with the car, ‘Remember it's diesel!' I'm sure I will now!
We do learn from our mistakes. I think it's natural to want to spare young people heartache and pain by sharing with them our own hard-won lessons based on the mistakes we've made. And when they are genuinely at risk, we have a duty of care to stop them harming themselves. But we also need to let them find their own way in the world, to learn to fight their own battles and learn from their mistakes. We can't expect to shortcut that process by hoping they will learn the same lessons from all of our mistakes when we share our experiences with them.
Be honest about your motivation
There's a constant need for this in youth work – to consider what our motivation is when we engage with young people, but I think it's particularly important to consider when we think about sharing our experiences and testimonies. Are we secretly out to try to impress them, or to make them like us more? Or to control or to manipulate? To be honest, it can be hard to discern our true motives and often they are mixed, with good intentions tainted by self-promoting tendencies. But we need to examine why we're talking about our own experiences and who really benefits from them.
Beware sanitised or spectacular testimonies
A testimony can be a statement given under oath in a courtroom, as well as an account of what God has done in someone's lives. Both of these meanings have the sense of a rehearsed and carefully crafted statement, well prepared with a deliberate intention to them. Again, a testimony can be extremely powerful but we need to beware the temptation to sanitise our stories, even if it's with the intention of making God look great. As I've already said, young people are good at detecting any mismatch between our lives and our words.
We also need to be aware of the potential backlash there can be to the more spectacular stories of what God has done in people's lives. I can remember reading ‘The Cross and the Switchblade'[i] and ‘The Hiding Place'[ii] as a teenager, both remarkable stories of people finding God or being faithful to him in the midst of very difficult circumstances. More recently I've been inspired by ‘The Heavenly Man'[iii]. Stories like these can broaden our understanding of the work of God and the challenge of living the Christian life. The downside can be when we compare ourselves to the protagonists and feel completely inferior and useless because we may struggle with our faith just because we have a bad day. The Christian life is not a competition – each of us needs our own relationship to God, not to live vicariously.
Having said all that, I'll repeat what I said at the start. Sharing experience and testimony with young people can be really powerful – inspiring them to go further in the Christian faith, giving them an example of how to face and overcome challenges, showing them the down-to-earth reality of a life lived following Jesus. So how can we do it effectively?
Be honest
These first two points need to be taken in tandem. Don't feel that you should only share the highs of your Christian life. Be prepared to talk about how you have made mistakes, how you cope with doubts and the challenges you face. Don't feel you have to dress up your story or skip over the difficult bits. Young people will appreciate your honesty and it will equip them better for life. But at the same time…
Protect yourself
…don't feel that you have to tell them all about your personal problems! It's just not appropriate to share some of what happens to us with young people. And sometimes we need to live through situations and learn for ourselves before we share them with others. You need to remember at all times that you are the adult and they are young people, so you won't want to talk to them as you would a trusted friend or even a member of your house group if you go to one. We must never use them as counsellors or confidantes. Sometimes we need to share things with an adult friend first and work through our issues. Decide what your personal boundaries are – they will be different for different people – and don't feel bad about sticking to them.
One-to-ones
Personal stories can be particularly effective in small group settings or one-to-ones where they can be a key to developing closer relationships. John Powell in his book Why am I afraid to tell you who I am? talks about five levels of communication. The closer we are to someone, the higher the level of communication we'll use:
Clichés – such as ‘How are you?' ‘I'm fine' at the start of conversations
Facts – such as ‘I went to the shops today'
Opinions – such as ‘I think voting for Brexit was a mistake'
Feelings – such as ‘I'm really frustrated with you'
True intimacy – when we experience a real empathy with the person we are talking to, sharing the same emotions.
If we want to deepen our relationship with someone and move it up a level, we need to start to use that level in our conversation with them. Telling our own stories can be a great way of moving a relationship with a young person on from clichés and facts to opinions and feelings, bearing in mind all the safeguards that we have already talked about. It's also easier in a one-to-one or small group setting to gauge how the story is being received.
Applying the Bible
One of the most effective times to share experiences is in explaining how we have applied the Bible to our own lives. If you're studying a passage with your group, think in advance of what impact those verses have had on your own life. Have they helped you in a decision you have made? Or provided guidance when you have been trying to discern what to do? This can give concrete examples of the impact the Bible can have on your everyday lives and give young people a model to follow.
Who else does this impact?
The row you had with your husband last week over him always leaving the loo-seat up and the way you sorted it out may be a great example of applying ‘don't let the sun go down on your wrath', but it could be completely embarrassing to him next time the group come round to your house. Likewise, stories about your own children may be funny now when they are little but could come back to haunt them in future years. You need to think carefully about who else is included in your retelling of your experience and how that might impact them. Ask permission from them if you have any doubts, explaining what you want to talk about and why. Remember that you signed up to be a youth leader, but your spouse and children didn't!
Encourage young people to tell their stories
Make space for young people to share their own experiences. You need to create a context where openness and vulnerability is valued and respected, and sharing your own experiences will help. You may want to prompt young people to share things that they have told you in conversation with the wider group, but of course you can't make them. Having one or two people who are prepared to lead the way can make a big difference.
It's also to get young people to reflect on their lives and to consider the changes that have happened. Get them to draw a graph – a line across the page which represents time and a vertical line at the left hand side that represents ‘closeness to God'. Get them to map out their lives so far. What has brought them closer to God? What has made them feel further away? What have been the most significant experiences in their lives so far? Give them time to draw their graphs and then get them to talk about it.
Be on the lookout for good books
You'll probably have your own versions of the books I mentioned above – stories of Christians that you have found inspirational and challenging. Other classics to look out for are ‘Run Baby Run'[iv] and ‘Chasing the Dragon'[v]. There must be more up-to-date stories like these, but I haven't read any recently! Ask around your church, or find out if there are books that young people have read themselves. You could start a small ‘library' of books like these that people in the group can borrow.
Real-life stories of how Christians have coped with doubt and pain, how they have faced suffering and challenges and how they have grown in their relationship with God can be incredibly powerful and inspiring. Pray that God will give you discernment about what you should share and how you should share it as you seek to encourage young people in their walk with God.
Jenny Baker
[i] The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson, Zondervan Publishing House, ISBN: 0310248299
[ii] The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, Hodder and Stoughton Religious, ISBN: 0340863536
[iii] The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun, Monarch Publications, ISBN: 185424597X
[iv] Run Baby Run by Nicky Cruz, Hodder and Stoughton Religious, ISBN: 0340861967
[v] Chasing the Dragon by Jackie Pullinger, Hodder Arnold H&S, ISBN: 0340785691