How to Collect Stories
One of the major ways to convey the gospel is through the use of personal stories in worship to support the theme for that day. Nothing is as powerful as personal story. Using personal stories on video will also allow you to more easily introduce video into your worship service since you are not showing movies but people some fo the congregation knows.
- Hand out a fill-in-the-blank testimony sheet each Sunday and ask those whose life has been changed to fill in their story. Then compile the testimonies by themes so that they could quickly be located to support a particular sermon. You might also put a form on your website for submitting personal stories. When you need a personal, real story to support the worship theme, you can ask the person if they would tell their story on video so it could be shown in worship. This way you can control the length as well as help the person deal with their fear of standing in front of a congregation.
- Have a form for each of your small groups where they can record life transformational stories and sent in to be placed in files by theme.