Stop Testifying and Start Witnessing

There is a difference between an expert witness and an actual-event witness, and it matters more in the life of a disciple than most of us are comfortable admitting. An expert witness is brought in to explain the theory. She has studied the subject and knows the terminology. She can speak with authority about the general principles at play, the relevant history, and the interpretive framework that best applies to the situation. She is credible, polished, and entirely disconnected from personal experience with the specific event in question.

An actual-event witness was there. He cannot explain all the theory and may stumble over some of the terminology. But when he describes what he saw, what he heard, what happened to him and around him there is a quality to that testimony that no amount of expert knowledge can manufacture.

I have been guilty, more times than I would like to admit, of trying to be an expert witness for Christ in situations that called for an actual-event witness.

We gravitate toward the expert role because it feels safer. Theory can be defended with arguments. Someone can push back on my explanation of the atonement and I can respond with a better-constructed explanation. The exchange stays in the realm of ideas, which is a comfortable place to live. But when I tell you what Christ has actually done in my life as the specific, personal, undeniable account of how He has moved, that is much harder to argue with. It is also much harder to manufacture if it hasn't happened.

Are we talking about the theory of Christ because that is what we know best, or because we have been counting the cost of actual followership and choosing, quietly, to keep a certain distance? I do not ask that with a spirit of accusation, I ask it because I have lived it. It is far more comfortable to describe the gospel in the abstract than to say, this is what I have seen. This is what He did. This is the moment my life changed course because of something I cannot explain any other way. That kind of testimony is vulnerable and does not come with the protection of academic distance. But it is the only kind that lands.

The culture we described in the first article as saturated with opinion, skeptical of authority, trained to dismiss expert claims, it is not easily moved by a well-reasoned theological argument. Not because the argument is wrong, but because the person on the receiving end has been taught to produce an equally confident counter-argument and call it a draw. What is significantly harder to dismiss is a life, a story. An honest account of someone who was moving in one direction and is now, undeniably, moving in another.

We have to always remember, the convincing is not our job. The Holy Spirit convicts of sin, He opens eyes to the truth, and He does the work that no amount of persuasive human effort can accomplish. The idea that I am going to argue someone into the kingdom is, at best, an overestimation of my own rhetorical gifts. At worst, it is a substitution of my effort for His work and that substitution never goes well.

My job is simpler and more personal than argument it is witness, and to tell what I have seen, point to where He is working, and trust the One who does the actual transforming to do His job. That is not passivity, it is an honest assignment. Stop preparing your theological defense and start telling your story. The world does not need another expert. It has more than enough of those. It needs people who were there who can say, with the quiet confidence of actual experience, that what they have seen is real.