Being a Credible Witness

Lately, I've been on a TV crime drama kick. I have been streaming episodes of Monk, Psych and Miami Vice from Hulu.com and my Netflix queue has been filled with seasons of The X-Files and Magnum P.I. And amidst all the OCD, oddness, machismo and mustaches runs a pretty consistent theme: witnesses — the foundation for the beginning of an investigation — are often unreliable. Their stories are often incomplete, the event is often misinterpreted by their senses, and the people they witness are often subject to their bias and prejudice. Oddly enough, these characteristics do not fully discredit their stories. The one thing that does harm the credibility of a witness is sharing a (duplicate) story with another witness. I'm no detective, but nothing draws the ire of my TV friends faster than two people who give an identical story: detail for detail; word for word; phrase for phrase; and pause for pause.

I began to wonder if this is the reason the church has fallen under suspicion when we share our individual faith with the world. It seems that often we share an understanding of God that sounds canned and contrived; our faith stories often have the life squeezed out of them in order to remove all of our personal additives. But I believe our personal additives are what give our unique understanding of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit life. When you show that you are a participant in the story, you show the openness of Christian fellowship and the openness of God.

I bring this up because, this year, General Conference added “witness” to the membership vows and baptismal covenant of the UMC. Along with your prayers, presence, gifts and service, all United Methodists herein promise to be witnesses. So, when you witness to your faith, give your story the way you have come to know it. An honest story — full of imperfections, incomplete and with the occasional “I don't know” — goes a long way toward your credibility with those who have heard the same old tired story which sounds like it came from a church creed. By sharing your knowingly imperfect witness, you tell those searching that you are honest. And with that kind of credibility, you can lead them to the hard evidence and the scene of your faith community. There, they can encounter, experience and participate in the story of salvation themselves.