When Your Testimony Doesn't Make the Grade

One of our assignments in seminary was to write out our testimony- or the story of how we came to follow Jesus and why we still follow him- and present it to the class.  There were a couple of instructions- the written part could not go longer than 4 pages and the spoken part could not go longer than 10 minutes.  Fair enough.  I went to work on my story, wrote it down, and presented it.

A week later the professor handed back our testimonies with a grade on it.

I got a B+.

For my faith story.

For my testimony.

Seriously!  What is the grading criteria for a person's faith story?!  Not enough sin?!  The need for grace wasn't great enough?!

And from what I could tell, the B+ wasn't for some grammatical errors or mistakes I made while telling my story, because there were no comments on the paper.  So, and I've always feared this, I was given a B+ because in fact, my faith story isn't all that exciting.

I knew early on my faith story was not A material.  I'd go to camp and hear the speaker talk about illicit drug use before a radical conversion experience.  I'd go to a youth retreat and hear a youth pastor tell stories about premarital miscues and stories of sowing wild oats until finding Jesus and getting back on the straight and narrow.

Even in seminary, the favored stories were from those for who seminary and pastoring was their second career, meaning they had worked in the world for awhile, had always sensed a call to serve God as a pastor and bucked it, but now had submitted to God and were here in seminary because of purposeful and profound obedience.  The subtle communication was we prefer Moses' story (why me? send someone else!) to Isaiah's story (here am I!  Send me!).

I am far from perfect.  Far from it.  I grew up in a home with parents who loved God and brought us to church.  I decided to follow Jesus at an early age.  I was a typical church kid who  as I got older struggled with displaying my faith and trying to fit in.  We moved when I was in high school and I decided to live a bit a more boldly for Jesus.  I remember that decision made me stand out some and yet still felt fortunate to have good friends and good memories.  I felt called to serve God as a pastor while in high school and explored the educational track that would get me to that point the soonest.  And since, there's been hardships- medical hardships with our children, financial struggles, and other sources of difficulty and pain.  And true to form, God has never left me or forsaken me.

It's not the kind of story Hollywood could make a movie about.

But if there's one thing where we all get As- it's our story of how we followed Jesus and why we follow him today.