Story Bearer: How to share your faith with your friends

By Phil Knox

Most people find faith because they know another Christian, see the difference Jesus makes, and hear their story. Yet most of us are reluctant faith sharers. This book inspires every Christian to see themselves as a story bearer.

Four distinct stories collide in great evangelism: God’s story, our story, the story of our friends and the story of our culture. The book expounds them all, encouraging us to learn and tell well the first two and listen and react well to the others.

Phil Knox punctuates his book with engaging accounts of success and failure. Story bearing has the potential to change the world of those around you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP
• Release date: Mar 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781789741544

Phil Knox

Phil Knox is an evangelist, speaker and missiologist at the Evangelical Alliance. He is passionate about making Jesus known and seeing communities thrive. He loves learning and has degrees in law and mission and evangelism. Phil is married to Dani and they have two sons, Caleb and Jos. He is an avid runner, enthusiastic waterskier and once broke the world record for the longest five-a-side football match. He is also a performance poet and author of Story Bearer. The Best of Friends is his second book.

Book preview

Introduction

There is a story to be told

Have you ever asked a question the response to which elicits way more intrigue and questions than you originally foresaw? It’s that feeling that you have somehow unearthed something that taps tenaciously at your curiosity, like having discovered a secret level on a computer game or opened a door to a new house where there is so much to explore. Your question is met with a laugh, a telling grimace or the riposte, ‘How long have you got?’, and your immediate thought is, ‘There is a story that needs to be told.’

Or have you ever known the feeling of having a piece of information, some news, a story even, that is bursting to get out? Worse still, have circumstances prevented you from unleashing this announcement to the world? You feel pregnant with anticipation, knowing that you have in your possession a gift that is everything its recipient could ever want or a weapon that could wreak devastation upon the world of another. I have been the bearer of all kinds of news. I have told stories that have made friends writhe and cry with laughter. I have told a wife that their husband had died. I once told my mum that she was going to be a grandmother.

There are few things more powerful than a story that needs to be told. No wonder there are nearly 300,000 Facebook status updates and 350,000 tweets posted every 60 seconds of every day. We are born storytellers with an inbuilt and innate desire to communicate.

Behind the fabric of the world is a story that holds us together. It is the steel frame upon which the building blocks of life sit. It is the intricate coding behind the programme you see on the screen. It has a hero, a thrilling narrative, a web of relationships, and the plot is still unravelling. It is a comedy, a tragedy, an action film and a love story. It has meaning because it is told by the Creator, the Author of all things. It has direction because it is told by the Way. It is true because it is told by the Truth. It is alive because it is told by the Life. It is dying to be told.

Could it even be that the challenges we face in our world are the result of our having lost sight of this story? The scholar Joseph Campbell stated that all the problems we are experiencing – economic disparity, ecological meltdown, crime, alienation, atomization, war, starvation – are the result of our having no communal myth; a story that unites us, defines us, in relationship to ourselves, other people and nature.

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We are losing the plot. Literally.

There is a story to be told. And I think deep down we all feel it. That tug on your heart you sense is there because there is a big story on the backstage of life’s theatre, there is a grand soundtrack behind the playlist of existence. There is meaning to it all, because life’s book has an author, its music has a composer.

And creation is desperate to tell it. Have you ever stood facing a scene of almost excruciating natural beauty? I have stood before mountains and felt microscopic against their towering, majestic presence. I have sat on beaches, experiencing sensory overload as my eyes drink in streams of light reflecting on the water, my ears hearing crash after crash of waves, my nose and mouth full of the taste of salty freshness. I have cradled a newborn son in my arms and known that the love I am able to project is a pale reflection of the love that is held for me.

Paul, an early Christian writer, even said that creation was groaning for the ending of the story.

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The story has a direction, a trajectory. It is going somewhere. The great invitation of life is to come and join in, to find yourself in the plot.

There is a story to be told. And it is a story that changes lives.

The journey of this book takes place in three parts. In the first, I will begin by making the case that, among the many things that happen to us when we become a Christian, we inherit a new story. We will then go on to consider some of the reasons why we are often so hesitant, impotent even, to share that story with those around us. I will then unpack the power of story and explain why narrative connects so powerfully with us today.

In the second part we will explore four distinct stories that have a role in how we share faith. There are two that need to be told, God’s story and your story, and two that need to be listened to, the story of the other and the story of culture.

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Our preparedness and our ability to tell these stories and our willingness to listen to those around us is an essential starting point if we are to be effective good news people.

Finally, in the third part, we will consider how some of these stories relate to one another and the dynamism that takes place when they collide. At the heart of the interweaving of narratives are relationships, with God and with others. We will explore the power of connection and how we become the best friend we can be. We will consider the importance of our proximity to God, through intertwining our story and his, and look at the relationship between sharing our faith and praying for our friends.

My hope is that by the end of this book you will feel both greater inspiration and greater confidence to be someone who bears a story of great news. I hope that you feel that the word ‘evangelism’ is more good news to you than bad news. I pray that sharing your faith becomes more natural relationship than nagging responsibility, more genuine delight than guilt-ridden duty.

There are also some practical outworkings; there is some homework to be done. I aim to inspire you to have begun praying for a few people to become Christians by the time you finish reading. I want you to give some thought to what the good news is and how you tell your story so that you are prepared when you get into conversations. To help you with this, there is a host of supplementary material, small-group discussion questions and videos at <www.storybearer.com>.

I hope that by the time you turn the final page, you love God more, love people more, are a better storyteller and a better friend. Let’s get started, shall