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How to Share the Gospel Online by Sharing Your Story

Share Jesus by sharing your story

Social media is one of the primary ways in which we communicate with others, so it makes sense to use it to communicate the most important message we have: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But how can you do that effectively? One of the best ways is simply to share your story.

My local church has a saying: “Your story, told truthfully, is good news for those who are far from God but close to you.” In the recent episode of Indigitous PULSE, we spoke with social media expert Maddie Garcia from Power to Change about how to use social media for God. In the video, they talk about how to share your story, how God is working in your life, in social media.

My Story

Maddie works with students to equip them for sharing their testimonies on social media. They use a Power to Change small group training series called My Story. “It walks you through how to write your story and how to share it with your friends,” Maddie says. The training goes through how to write your story and how to share it in different formats, such as a blog post or short video.

“It’s thinking through a thing you have gone through or a thing you have craved or been striving for that other people could relate to and see themselves in it,” Maddie says. “Then you tell the story of how you’ve come to know Jesus and how that’s made a difference in your day-to-day life and how it’s still an ongoing journey.”

If you want to see a good example of shareable video testimonies, check out content from I Am Second and Issues I Face. You probably won’t have their production values, but you can apply the concepts of good storytelling to your own story, even if it’s just a selfie video shared in an Instagram Story.

A Case study

During the Indigitous PULSE episode, Maddie shares an example of one way she shared her story, as a case study that others can follow. In Canada, there’s a nationwide mental health campaign called Bell Let’s Talk. As part of that campaign, people around Canada share their own stories about dealing with mental illness as a way of breaking the silence and stigma and helping other people find the help they need.

Maddie wrote a blog post about her own struggles with mental health. To preview the post, she shared a short video on social media, just a simple selfie where she gave a hint at her story, with the rest of her story to be found in the blog post. “I opened up about being in an emotionally abusive relationship in my past,” Maddie says. “In the blog post I shared more about the hope that I found because I have Jesus in my life. I think in my social media post I started to get at it … but wasn’t telling the whole story, wanting to give some intrigue.” She got an overwhelmingly positive response from people who related to her story, thanking her for her vulnerability and wanting to hear more.

To simplify things, you can try these steps:

  1. Post a short personal story on social media that talks about some relatable struggle. Don’t share everything here. Create intrigue.
  2. Link that to a longer version of your story, where you talk about the role Jesus has played in your life.
  3. Use that to start conversations with others. Remember, it’s good to the conversation focus on the other person if they want to talk.

“Being open and honest about my life and showing how Jesus has made an impact on me opened doors to conversations with other people,” Maddie says.