United Methodist Membership Vows - Is "Witness" the Most Difficult for Us?

My church has been participating in a month long focus on our membership vows which include prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. We've covered the first four already and this week leading up to Sunday worship, we're focusing on witness.

These five membership vows are repeated over and over again in United Methodist churches whenever we receive new members. Witness, the new fifth vow was added a few years ago. It took me a while to remember to include witness when repeating the list of vows but now it has become a habit to include it.

Witness appears to be the most challenging of the vows for most United Methodists. With the exception of some who have a passion and spiritual gift to witness to others, most of us are hesitant and feel ill equipped to share our faith in Jesus Christ.

For this reason, I'm glad that witness was added to the membership vows. Without it, we can easily rationalize that we don't need to share our faith with others and instead share our faith with our actions. But that's why we have "service" as one of the membership vows. I believe the intention of adding the word, "witness" was to reinforce our need to verbally share our faith as well as show it through our service.

We tend to do the same thing with gifts when we say, "I don't give financially since I give of my time." They're not one and the same, although they do overlap to varying degrees. All five are vital parts of what it means to make a commitment to Christ and his church.

There's so much to be said about how we can strengthen our witness to others, but one of the key ways is to simply share how God is active and real in our lives. I like that approach a lot better than trying to convince others with arguments. By simply sharing how we see God at work in our lives we help others to know about the good news of Jesus Christ.