November 13, 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Luke 21:5-19
I'd left the practice of testimony in my childhood church. Then I learned why Luke suggests it when your world is falling apart.
Public testimony was a big part of my church life growing up. My grandfather was a famed traveling evangelist connected to the Evangelical Covenant tradition. One uncle was a Conservative Baptist pastor; another traveled the globe distributing free copies of the New Testament and gathering converts’ stories. Our extended family regularly celebrated personal testimonies in worship and in Sunday school, where church members shared stories of repentance and transformation.
My parents, both introverts, were more subdued. While we talked about others’ testimony, I never heard them give their own—and I was never compelled to share mine. After they divorced, my father found his way to a Presbyterian congregation. In his first adult Sunday school class, he encountered two Presbyterians at odds over the interpretation of scripture. He knew he had found a spiritual home. “In the Presbyterian Church,” he regularly told me, “I don’t feel I have to leave my brains in the narthex.”
I followed in his footsteps. The more subdued, intellectual faith of the Reformed tradition seemed to push personal witness to the spiritual sidelines. This appealed to me. Sound doctrine and a more modest, incarnational form of discipleship replaced the effervescence and subjectivism of testimony.
