Roleplaying No 2 – A Faith-Sharing Encounter With a Child in a Far Away Village
– From A Real Life Experience, by Winston Worrell
This is the second of several role-playing exercises to help Christians practice sharing their faith.
Invite the members of your faith-sharing group to travel with you in their minds to a small village in a far away country where you will be the main speaker that evening. You have travelled for 24 hours by air, by sea and by land to finally arrive at your destination. After a wonderful meal and good rest, now you are at the chapel and enjoying a worship service filled with wonderful music, singing and dancing. Now, this vibrant congregation is singing the hymn before your sermon, and all of a sudden you feel a tug to your shirt, blouse or jacket, and the tug is from a little girl who looks you in the eye with a great smile. She then asks a very important question: What difference can Jesus make in my life? You ask the congregation to sing the hymn one more time to give time to answer the little girl’s question.
What will you say to her that might make a difference in that girl’s life in the minute or two, especially remembering that you are now Jesus’ representative for the moment?
Roleplaying in the Classroom. Now, without giving any more information, ask each person in the room to choose a partner. Set your clock or phone for one minute. One partner pretends to be the little girl from the far away village and the other partner answers the question for one minute: “What difference can Jesus make in my life?” Both partners are to answer the question, one after the other, for one minute each, and neither of them will interrupt each other during each other’s answers.
After this first exercise, ask everyone how it went. Then ask them what they think the little girl was really asking. Then, remind them that “the only way to learn to share our is by sharing our faith.” Then, remind them of the one principle that we have already looked at: “Faith-Sharing is in the first person.” “Witnessing is most effective when done in the first person.” This principle is found in the back of the Faith-Sharing New Testament on page 520, question 4 (j). Now, then, give them another principle that many have found most helpful in faith-sharing: “We share what we believe and in whom we trust. We do not tell people whom to believe or whom to trust.” This principle is found in the back of the Faith-Sharing New Testament on page 519, question 4 (h). Then explain that the little girl was really asking: “What difference has Jesus made in your life?” The little girl wants to hear your first person story of how Jesus has impacted your life. She wants to hear how real Jesus is in people’s lives in other countries. Isn’t this the question that many on the street in the USA are also asking today?
Now, ask the same partners to each answer the same question again to each other, but this time each person shares the difference that Jesus has made in their lives. Then, after they have both shared again with each other, ask how it went? Was it different from the first time? Easier? Did you need more time? Then explain that God gives us one-minute moments every day of our lives. How might God use us to make a real difference in people’s lives? For God has already made a real difference in our lives.