Christian Theological Seminary (CTS) is hoping to bring back the practice of testimony in Black churches.
Funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Testify! is a five-year grassroots initiative of CTS centered around revitalizing the practice of testimony within the Black church through the arts and digital storytelling. From presenting proof of concept last July to preparing to roll out the first live event on Oct. 2, Testify! was designed to grow into a movement, living and breathing with the given church communities, Nick Peterson, assistant professor of homiletics and worship at CTS, told the Recorder.
“We believe that testimony and testifying are spiritually informative, and that churches for a number of reasons, have abandoned that practice,” Peterson said. “Our project ultimately seeks to empower churches, specifically Black churches … to revitalize, reimagine, reestablish, strengthen practices of testimony in their congregations and community with a direct focus on the arts and digital storytelling.”
Testify! Is a multipronged ecosystem designed around several pillars that all feed into each other, and Testify! Live is the anchoring catalyst. The yearly live event centers around a cohort of artists who will attend retreats to pray together, learning the guiding principles of testimony and then create new works for the live event that “intersect their faith journey,” Peterson said.
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When people hear every day people talk about the ways they’ve seen God at work in their lives, it strengthens their faith, Peterson said. Testify! is important because it “reclaims our inheritance” as the household of faith, in ways that aren’t just reserved for reverends.
“I grew up knowing God could heal because I heard the testimonies of people who have been healed, people who I had seen be sick and be sick no more,” Peterson added. “That wasn’t just what the preacher said or wasn’t just refrain that I heard in the song, it was because I heard it from the mouths of the people who were living it.”
Testify! Live kicks off in Indianapolis this fall, then will travel to Atlanta in 2027, Houston in 2028, Washington D.C. in 2029 and Chicago in 2030. The cohort will feature local artists from hosting cities across various mediums of creative expression, not just music and dance— including visual arts, poetry, sculpture, photography and textiles.
The bulk of the initiative is the Testify Toolkit, which features practical resources for churches to adopt some form of testimony practice. This includes things from guides for youth pastors and media directors to a four-week Bible study.
Another aspect of Testify! is purely archival, Peterson said. Over the years and through various preaching programs such as the African American Legacy Preaching series, CTS has built a strong relationship within Black religious congregations, and this project is built off of that relationship. However, Peterson said he’s also interested in understanding the world of the church as it relates to the congregation and the laypeople as opposed to exclusively the pastor and worship leader.
Testify! aims to collect these stories through the Testify Booth, which will go to major National Black religious conventions and gatherings, allowing guests to record a 2-3-minute testimony. A larger part of this will be a series of documentaries featuring longer-form testimonies to capture the stories of those whose experiences may have “started off as a personal encounter with God that led to communal transformation,” Peterson said.
“This program extends from that kind of commitment to the lived Black faith to be inclusive of the arts and lay witness in these ways that are also spiritually formative and faith formative,” Peterson said.
The initiative also incorporates digital media campaigns to “hijack the religious side of social media,” in hopes to flood the space with real examples of every day testimony, Peterson said. This can look like short form videos of people sharing stories of the everyday presence of God in their lives and daily testimony through hashtags such as #TestifyTuesday, #ThankfulThursday and #FaithfulFriday.
“So that we start to create online, across these various churches, a culture of sharing God’s stories in our spheres of influence,” Peterson added. “Our spheres of (influence) includes as a church can be the church’s social media, which may typically function as a bulletin board, but we’re helping churches to think about ‘how do you use your social media to actually do spiritual formation?’”
The goal is to partner with 10 local churches in the first year and increase to as many as 250 across the life of the project. Testify! has already begun rolling out in the Indianapolis community, as Peterson said CTS met with Pastor Jeffrey A. Johnson III of Eastern Star Church, Pastor Winterbourne Harrison-Jones of Witherspoon Presbyterian Church and Pastor Carlos Perkins of Bethel Cathedral AME to gauge interest, host the artist cohort retreat and kickstart the digital media campaign.
On Oct. 2, CTS invites the community to attend its first Testify! Live event at Eastern Star Church, Cooper Road Campus. The Indianapolis artist cohort features seven local artists who created original works for the event, including gospel artist Lamar Campbell, quilter Dr. Tony Jean Dickerson, sculptor De’Amon Harges, poet Januarie York, photographer Wildstyle Pashall, Jesse Mays, who does clergy vestments, and dancer Adrienne Jackson.
Testify! Is set to take place at 6 p.m. on Oct. 2 at Eastern Star Church, 5805 Cooper Road. Tickets are free, but guests are encouraged to register at www.gotestify.church
Contact Arts & Culture Reporter Chloe McGowan at 317-762-7848. Follow her on X @chloe_mcgowanxx.
Chloe McGowan is the Arts & Culture Reporter for the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper. Originally from Columbus, OH, Chloe has a bachelor's in journalism from The Ohio State University. She is a former IndyStar Pulliam Fellow, and has previously worked for Indy Maven, The Lantern, and CityScene Media Group. In her free time, Chloe enjoys live theatre, reading, baking and keeping her plants alive.
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