Boy can it feel frightening to speak about Jesus. And I'm a church planter! As pastor of the Bridge Church in Battersea, we knew that many in our church felt overhwelmed about this and we wanted to provide some ways to get people started. One resource we developed in partnership with London City Mission was called "Sharing your story." It was all about removing the fear of speaking about Jesus, and encouraging people that they had a story to share about how Jesus had been at work in their own life. I'm providing the text of it free here for you to read and use:
Do you think you could tell other people how you became a Christian? Jesus
would love you to do that! It might sound scary, but your story could help someone else
so much – it might even mean they’d like to become a Christian too!
You might be thinking, “But what would I say?” That’s a good question, and the point of this leaflet isn’t to tell you exactly what to say, but just to encourage you to share something of your story. What matters is what’s coming from your heart, not what someone else has told you to say! If you’re a Christian, you’ve become friends with God because of Jesus – in fact,
you’re one of God’s children! Could you speak about your new relationship with God to someone else –someone who doesn’t yet know Him? The Bible says that Christians have God’s Holy Spirit inside them. So God is able to help us speak to others even when we’d
normally find it hard
Even so, you might like a few pointers about what to say. Here’s a list of things to consider:
Being a Christian means getting to know the help that’s available from God – help that we all really need. Could you say something about the way God has helped you in your life? What help has He given you? Why was that help important to you personally?
As we live as a Christian, we start to find that Jesus means a lot to us. We really like Him! What is it that you personally like about Jesus? For some people it’s His wise words for life. Other people like the way He came to earth to heal sick people and put their lives back together again. For others it’s knowing that He died on the cross so our sins
could be completely forgiven. For still others it’s knowing that He was raised from the dead, so our death won’t be the end either. There’s so many brilliant things about Jesus – the hard thing can be knowing where to start!
Our Christian story isn’t just about the moment we became a Christian, though that’s a wonderful thing to talk about. It’s also about our day to day relationship with God – the conversations we have with Him through prayer and through the Bible. And it’s about our experience of God when we meet with His family, at church. Could you say something about your time with God this week, or even today? What was it like? Did you experience
anything of God’s love? Other people might like to know!
If you can, try to speak about God and Jesus more than about our particular church (though that’s OK!). And try to talk about the way God’s changed you personally more than the way He’s changed your circumstances. (He promises He’ll always keep changing us on the inside, but He doesn’t promise our lives will always be easy!)
Most of all, trust God, be honest, be brave, and keep praying that God would give you opportunities to share your story. Others need to know how good He is
too! ...God is good!
Here's how the flyer looked!
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