However We Witness, Witness We Must by Maxie Dunnam

One of the privileges and responsibilities too many Methodist Christians ignore is witnessing. We take the way some Christians do it as the norm and that turns us off. We close our minds to the fact that some may never hear unless we share.  

I was blessed to chair the Committee of the World Methodist Council for 12 years. This gave me opportunity to travel the world and meet extraordinary Christians. One of those is Stanley Mogoba, the first black person to be elected the presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of South Africa.

About the time Nelson Mandela was sent to prison, Stanley met with a group of angry students and sought to dissuade them from violent demonstration. Just for that – trying to avert violence – he was arrested and imprisoned for six years on the notorious Robben Island. Mandela was already in prison there. His life and witness led to break the back of Apartheid, the awful governmental system of racial oppression in South Africa. He and Magoba became friends there in prison.

One day someone pushed a religious tract under Magoba’s cell door. Don’t ever forget: most persons who come to Christ do so not by big events, but by relationships and simple actions, like a person putting a tract beneath a prison cell door. By reading that little tract and responding to the Holy Spirit, lives forever changed. Magoba quoted the words of Charles Wesley’s hymn to describe his experience:

“Thine eye diffused a quickening ray
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
my chains fell off; my heart was free

God showed up, and something unexpected happened.

God who came unexpectedly at Pentecost, continues to show up, in persons, on the streets, in the Church. Some sort of witness shares in the redemptive process. It certainly doesn’t require a printed tract, but, more often than not, it requires some form of witness. That is the task of every Christian. How seriously are you assuming your task?