How to use them
Say what this class is not, in the first ten minutes
People arrive braced. They expect evangelism training, and a room bracing for
something it is not being asked to do will not write anything honest.
So say it early: this class stops at the doorway. It builds one short true story
and one invitation, and it does not ask anybody to argue, close, or persuade.
That sentence buys you more participation than any amount of encouragement.
Assent is not belief
Chapter 1 will get quick agreement — of course anyone can share — and the
agreement means nothing. The written exercise is what tests it.
Watch for the person who says they are unqualified when what they mean is that
they are ashamed. Do not correct that publicly. The page is where it gets named,
and naming it out loud in front of a room does the opposite of what you want.
Protect the silence in chapter 5
Everything this book produces gets written in one twenty-minute stretch of
silence, which makes that silence the most fragile thing you are protecting. It
only takes one person deciding the quiet is over.
So announce the length up front — an unexplained twenty minutes reads as being
left alone rather than being given room. Somebody will still be looking at an
empty page five minutes in, and the move there is to arrive with a question
rather than with a suggestion: what was hardest before you knew him? Never hand
them a sentence; it stops being theirs. And an empty beat is a finding rather
than a failure — that gap is usually where the evening’s real conversation is.
The two beats that go missing
Almost every failure in this book is one of two omissions, and both look fine
from the outside.
The invitation falls off the end, leaving a warm story that asks nothing of
anybody who hears it. The now arrives in the past tense — worth asking,
kindly, whether it is still true this month. There is a third, subtler
distortion: somebody whose before has swelled to match the dramatic
testimonies they have sat through. Shrink the question rather than argue with
the answer — not how bad was it, but what was I missing?
Guard the room in chapter 7
Saying it out loud is the session where damage is possible, and three things
prevent it.
Nobody edits anybody else’s facts. Cut that off the moment it starts and give the
reason out loud, because the reason is the whole lesson: that life belongs to the
person who lived it. Second, put an ordinary testimony straight after a dramatic
one, deliberately — otherwise the dramatic one quietly persuades three people
that theirs is not worth saying. Third, put a clock on the rounds; eight minutes
from one partner means the other got nothing.
Sort the pairs beforehand, and be willing to partner somebody yourself on an odd
number. Nobody in this session should only listen.
End on a date, and on the prayer
The last chapter is where the class either happened or did not. A commitment with
no date is the single failure it exists to prevent, and it is easy to let pass.
One clarification you will need: pointing to Jesus rather than to a building
restrains our invitations, not their curiosity. If somebody asks to come to a
service, go with them.
Then end on the prayer, out loud, and stop. A room that wants to end on discussion
will happily talk the ending away.
Using the two books
The workbook is the participant’s: short lead-in, the questions, the space to
write. Print it front-and-back for a binder.
The leader book is this one plus the whole teaching and the facilitator layer
— per-chapter timing, what to prepare, and what to watch for. Keep it open in
front of you during the session. It carries answers and notes that are not in the
participant book, so hand out the workbook, never this.
