About the Writer:
Margaret
Cook

With a tender heart, a drive for learning and a gift for sharing, Margaret brings her years of experience as a licensed professional counselor and a woman of faith to all her writings. Her insights and biblical understanding bring home principles we all can use - no matter the circumstances we are in.

Testimony Writing By Margaret Cook, M.Ed., Licensed Professional Counselor, Life Coach

Every Christian Writer has a story of faith that belongs only to them. What you tell and how you present the story changes for your audience. Spend time writing and re-writing your story for different audiences.

A testimony is any story of faith you relate. Miriam Webster defines testimony for our purposes as “a public profession of religious experience.”  Many Christians have a signature story of how God touched their life in a transformational way. Take time in your journal to write about the stories of your relationship with God. Once you have a few ideas, write a 500 word testimony about God’s relationship to you. Send in your testimonies for the newsletter so people will hear the message and share their stories too.

Here are seven tips for testimony writing:

1. Identify your target audience and three characteristics or values that are important to your audience.
2. Look to incorporate those common characteristics that your story has with the reader.
3. Write the story as though you were talking face-to-face with someone in your target audience. Make it meaningful, relevant and engaging enough that even if the person was a stranger they would want to hear the story.
4. Review your rough draft and strengthen the leading sentence or paragraph to get the attention of your audience.
5. Revise your story to make smooth transitions from one idea to the next and keep it short and peppy.
6. Does your story capture the emotion you felt and does it engage the reader in caring about you or relating to you?
7. Is the reader likely to want more of God at the end of the story? Write and ending that will compel them toward God’s mercy and love.

Encourage everyone you know in Christ to tell and write their testimonies. We can help share the good news on the Next-Step-of-Faith website.

Copyright © May, 2008 – Margaret Cook. All rights reserved.

Permission to use or duplicate this article is available by contacting the writer at

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