The Stories From Our Team “Tell It All”
Meaningful conversations that; support hope, bring encouragement, help people navigate the situations they find themselves in, facilitate connection or community for practical help, and lead others toward God are not the only story of impact! These stories also impact those of us responding: they fuel our passion and allow us to be more open and bold in our faith.
The benefit of chatting with people online is an all-around win. It’s not possible to get involved in conversations that change lives without also reaping the benefit of our own personal transformation. The stories from our team tell it all. Anna coordinated a small team of Responders on the Why God page prior to it being transferred to Roaring Hope. Anna shares some great insights with us.
Anna’s story
I was initially skeptical at the potential of being able to make an impact through technology, but I was amazed at the rapport and depth built into brief online conversations. As a coordinator of a small response team, it was encouraging to see the collective results of both the fruitful conversations we had, as well as personal growth within the team. Being a responder on the Why God Facebook page has been a positive and beneficial experience for a broad range of reasons:
1. Provides an opportunity to grow in evangelism practically. Because everything communicated is written, there’s time to be able to think about it and gain a deeper understanding of aspects of God’s truth. My understanding of the gospel and the goodness of God has grown since I joined the team.
2. Creates a space to improve communication skills, particularly those related to evangelism. There is usually an abundance of online chats (we might have 20-30 conversations over a 2-hour period), giving an enormous opportunity to practice and improve.
3. Gives experience in responding to sensitive topics. Questions such as ‘why does God allow suffering’ and ‘does God love me if I’m gay’, have frequently come up, and were initially hard to know how to deal with. Learning how to listen, hearing where people are at, graciously responding and pointing them towards Jesus has been so helpful and something that might not have been so quickly learned in other circumstances.
4. Allows space for specific feedback and reflection. As all the conversations are saved and accessible retrospectively, we’ve been able to go back over them and see how we could’ve answered differently or taken the conversation in a different direction.
5. There is a team approach to the conversations. Over the course of a few days, a few different responders might end up chatting with the same person. This has helped us learn from each other and support each other as the conversation progresses.
6. The skills gained are mostly transferable to real-time, face-to-face situations. So many times, our team has been out on street evangelism and we’ve all found that what we’ve learned from Why God has really helped in those instances.
Perhaps the most encouraging thing of all has been the delight of seeing people moving closer to Jesus. Lives are being impacted and it’s a privilege to be able to share hope and the truth of who God is as He opens doors for them to come to know Him.
(Anna Page pictured above)
