OUTWARD DISCIPLINE

WITNESS

 

The practice of announcing the good news of Jesus by sharing your faith with others.

IDEAS FOR PRACTICE

  • Intentional witness:

    • Choose 1-5 people in your life who don’t know Jesus that you want to be more spiritually intentional with this year.

    • Before you do anything else, commit to interceding for these people regularly.

    • Often, we think of witness as randomly inserting a gospel presentation into casual conversation. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the most freeing thing can be identifying where your friend is at on their spiritual journey and adjusting your witness accordingly. Are they spiritually curious at all? If not, “witness” will look like piquing curiosity more than a gospel presentation. Are they open to change? Are they actively seeking? Each of these represents different stages in a person’s journey and requires a different type of witness behavior from us. If you’d like to learn more about this idea, this resource is incredibly helpful.

      Regardless of what stage they are at, an invitation to church is always a good place to start. For the skeptic who wants nothing to do with “organized religion,” special events such as Easter or Christmas Eve are often easiest. For the active seeker in your life - someone looking for God or wanting to learn about Jesus - please bring them to church AND your homegroup immediately. :)

    • Practice sharing your own story of what Jesus means to you and how he has changed your life. Your story is one of the best witness tools you have and is appropriate to share at any stage.

  • Responsive witness (as opportunities present themselves):

    • Make a commitment not to dodge questions about your faith, or shy away from conversations where your faith will come up

    • Offer to pray for people in your life who are sick or hurting, regardless of their spiritual background. If they say yes, consider asking if you can pray for them in person.

    • Sometimes God shares words with us for people who don’t know him, as a way of piquing their curiosity and engaging their souls. If you feel like God has given you a word for someone in your life, prayerfully consider sharing it. A god rule of thumb: share encouraging words only. If the word could come across as threatening, keep it to yourself.

    • Strike up a conversation with a stranger in a coffee shop or on a plane, or an acquaintance at work or at a social event, and see if you can find a way to have a spiritual conversation and the opportunity to share your own story. “Do you have a spiritual background?” is a great ice-breaker for this kind of conversation.