Telling Our Faith Stories – Why?

What I call "faith stories", some might refer to as "God stories," or even "Jesus stories," although I am not sure I have ever heard that description of such stories. Indeed, one could go as far as to talk about "Holy Spirit" stories if we want to continue in this vein. Not to say that these names could not be used. What I mean by all of this is the stories from our lives that reflect our understanding of God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit being active in our lives.

I have been known to say - too many times - and, as I said to my wife today, that very much includes myself, too many of us Mennonites, which is the denomination of Christian to which I belong, are not very good at telling our faith stories. Others might have their comments about why this might be so, but I can think of at least three reasons for this in contemporary North America:

1.     We as Mennonites were persecuted so much in first the Netherlands in the 16th-17th centuries, then Prussia in the 18th-19th centuries and finally Russia, in the 19th-20th centuries, that we began to make agreements with our governments to allow us to live in peace and quiet, including refraining from military service, which was part of what we objected to in our nonviolent faith. The result of maintaining this peace and quiet was that we really did not practice what some would refer to as "witnessing," at least not in the verbal sense. Over time, it appears that the persecution silenced our voice. Indeed, the term "Die Stille im land" became applied to us. Reflecting our ethnic Dutch-German heritage, referring to where Mennonites originated, this means "the quiet in the land." On the other hand, many of us in a variety of sub-denominations including the Hutterites and Amish, who were Anabaptist but not, strictly speaking, Mennonite, have over the centuries provided a very good witness in terms of how we live, or what Bible students would refer to as our "works."

2.     The second reason really arises from the first. We did not really practice telling one another of how we saw God at work in the world or in our lives, so we certainly did not build up a repertoire of such stories, let alone the skills to share the stories, and eventually perhaps not even the will, with non-believers.

3.     The third reason relates to our contemporary society. Many of us know the saying, that in our society “there are two things we don't talk about: religion and politics.” Talking about our faith, religion, in public in Canadian and even American society today, although perhaps less so in the US, is not really deemed socially acceptable. In keeping with the individualism in our society, faith is something to keep to yourself. At least, that is the way it was when there was a lot more that we kept to ourselves than you now see in our shameless tell-all social media world.

If I wanted to be blunt about all of this (some might say crass?), I would simply say, admit, that our old enemy The Devil has been very successful in our world in figuring out how to shut us up and prevent the spread of the gospel.

So, how do we turn this around? Perhaps, some of you might say, why should we be concerned about changing this? The first reason that might come to the mind of some is because of our declining church attendance. We are afraid that some of our congregations will simply disappear. Of course, the reason we are concerned about that is in part because, for those of us who still value "church," we don't want to see this happen. The real reason we should want to be turning this around though is that, if we are truly Believers, our Lord, Jesus Christ, has asked us to share the good news he brought to the world with others. I am afraid too many Christians are simply comfortable with maintaining their own Christian life and not putting any effort into fulfilling this, which some refer to as The Great Commission.

We know that even though congregations may die, The Church will never die. The Holy Spirit will just see to it that it springs up somewhere else. Indeed, we just need to look at history to see how this has occurred. Countries where the church was first in existence, such as modern-day Turkey, are now almost absent of any churches. So, some might say, what is there to worry about? Let The Spirit do its work. However, that does not get away from our own personal responsibility, each and every one of us believers, to be ambassadors for Christ. As some of our more evangelically minded Christian brothers and sisters would say, do we really want to approach heaven’s gates empty-handed, meaning, in their terms, not having led anyone else to the salvation of Jesus Christ?