Tell It Like It Is: Reclaiming the Practice of Testimony
Already an enormously gifted writer, preacher, and pastor, Lillian Daniel has done in this book something quite audacious—and wonderfully welcome. She's had the good sense to think about the church with the aid of the people who actually live it and make it. Thiswisdomcomes as a book about how recovering a homegrown practice of testimony helped transform one congregation. But in her hands the story becomes an enticing and full ecclesiology rooted in experience and empowered by hope. She hears and speaks the church into being here, and it's a joyous discovery. Testify away!(Wes Avram, Clement-Muehl Assistant Professor of Communication, Yale Divinity School)This is practical theology at its best.The book is theologically grounded, reflects on actual practice, and provides a useful model for all our churches. We learn that the gift of testimony not only strengthens worship and community caring, testimony can even reshape administration and committee meetings.The book is itself the testimony of a gifted and wise pastor, and like all faithful testimony, it convicts us and changes us, too.(David Bartlett, Professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary)While many church members sing “I Love to Tell the Story,” the sad truth is that too few do. Many either don’t tell the story or, when they do tell it, feel anxious or fretful, making it a far from loving experience. Lillian Daniel’s book offers wise advice about engaging a congregation in the practice of testimony—sharing stories of faith that enliven both the hearers and sharers.Daniel offers us a new look at an old tradition that many mainline congregations have abandoned. And in doing so she shows how testimony, bearing witness, breaths new life into people and the congregations they love.(J. Brent Bill, Executive Vice President, Indianapolis Center for Congregations; author of "Holy Silence")This marvelous book by Lillian Daniel is so much more than a bookabouttestimony. The book itself is a testimony to the powerful ways God works when people are invited to tell others what they have seen and heard and touched of God’s presence in their lives.These pages are populated with real people who may have more questions than answers. And yet, by speaking from the heart, they point us to the mysterious reality that crackles just below the surface of life. Without question, this book has the power to transform congregations, as Daniel’s own congregation was wondrously transformed by the practice of testimony.(Martin B. Copenhaver, Senior Pastor, Wellesley Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) and co-author, "This Odd and Wondrous Calling")In this beautifully written book, Lillian Daniel describes the practice of testimony: people standing up in community worship and telling stories about how they have experienced God. A simple definition perhaps, but Daniel movingly and thoughtfully shows how complex, powerful, risky, and life changing testimony can be. In these pages, people speak with wonder, joy, and astonishment about the places where the pathways of their lives have intersected the trajectories of God's presence and grace. With candor, theological insight, and pastoral wisdom, Daniel describes how testimony can deeply affect, and finally transform, the life of a congregation. Prepare to learn here about the practice of testimony, but prepare also to be touched by the courage and honesty of people speaking aloud their experiences of faith.(Thomas G. Long, Bandy Professor of Preaching, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA)This is exactly the kind of case-study of practices in congregations that is needed at this time. Lillian Daniel tells the story of a New England, Congregationalist church's remarkable engagement with the practice of testimony in a very loving and engaging way.(Anthony B. Robinson, President, Congregational Leadership Northwest, Seattle, Washington)Great worship is alive and a bit unpredictable. It wakes us up. And drawing us to the edge of our seat, it draws us over the edge of how we’ve always thought about things, how we’ve always thought about the people sitting next to us.Daniel’s book tells the story of one congregation who learned that the power to make their gatherings alive and transformative lay not in a program or in technology, but in themselves—their own simple and profound stories of how they met God in various disguises and the difference it made. Oh, that more pastors and congregations could learn the same!(Mary Sellon)