What’s your story?
Recently, I
had the privilege of traveling to Finland with Susie Mapledoram (Diocese youth
officer) and +Mark (who led the confirmation service at St John’s recently) to
help lead a confirmation camp for English and Finnish young people.
During the
course of the week, as well as all of the fun and friendship building, Susie, +Mark and myself took it in turns to lead
reflections, prayers, Bible studies and activities to engage the young people
in what it looks like to be a Christian, looking at different subjects such as
The Bible, Church, Jesus, death and suffering etc.
Before we
left England, I was thinking and praying about what to do during my sessions. As
I’d never met these young people, I wasn’t really sure where they were at in
terms of their life/church experience. However, as I prayed, I had the
impression that I should leave plenty of space to just share my stories of
faith, the things that I have experienced in my own life as a follower of
Jesus.
It’s so
simple, but so true…Jesus told stories of what the Kingdom of God looks like,
and then the disciples were basically story tellers to Jesus’ death and
resurrection: “Jesus said this would happen, and then we saw it with our own
eyes.”
I’m
convinced if another generation is going to follow Jesus, then church
attendance isn’t going to do…it never has been sufficient-but instead we who
follow Jesus, need a story to pass on to others. We can’t rely on reading the
Bible and that being it, a lot of the New Testament is eye witness accounts of
what God was doing. We need to have our own stories of what God has done in our
lives to pass on. As we live our lives, trusting in Christ for all things
concerning our years on earth, family, friends, work situation, hopes and
dreams, the wider world, we will collect buckets of stories of how God showed
his faithful love towards us. I’ll finish with the below passage and I would
encourage each of us to have a think back and to start writing down our experiences
of God’s working in our lives.
We will not
hide these truths from our children;
we will tell the next
generation
about the glorious deeds of the Lord,
about his power and
his mighty wonders.
(Psalm 78:4)
Here’s to
telling our God story to the world!
Paul
Saxon, St John’s School Project Worker