The Testimony Prompter

Back in the day when I was leading worship one Sunday after another, I would with some regularity provide moments for personal sharing from the congregation.  It was something which seemed to fit in with the informality of Sunday evening worship and I am sure was a carryover from my days of growing up in small rural churches where Sunday evening worship often included a testimony time.  One of the things which frequently happened in such moments was the same people getting up and sharing the same thing they did the last time such a moment was offered.     

It always seemed that there should be some freshness to what we were sharing about our faith in Christ so I started inviting people to share in response to the question, "Where is it that you have experienced Christ since we last gathered?   I thought it was a good question to enable people to be more current in their sharing.   And while I have no regrets about offering such moments for personal sharing, I am no longer so sure that my testimony prompter was such a good one.    

The reason is simple.  The question suggests that God is to be experienced every now and again in the ordinary moments of our life.  It caused people to search their memory for something that might be appropriate to share.  It did not really encourage people to think about the reality that God is constantly making Himself known to us and that there is not a day in which such does not happen.  Maybe the hesitation to share came from not being able to filter out some single thing from the many, many ways God in Christ was experienced since the last gathering.  One thing is certain.  Were it mine to do today, I would find another way to phrase this testimony prompter.