Bigger Sins, Better Stories?

The Problem with Testimony Culture

The Rise of the Conversion Spectacle

Evangelical Christianity loves a good testimony. The more sensational the story, the better. This isn’t new of course. Revival movements in the 18th and 19th centuries helped create a genre of conversion narrative, and as Iain Murray observed, “revival” slowly became “revivalism.” In light of this, stories of transforming grace soon became box office attractions. The focus shifted from God’s ordinary, ongoing work to the most electrifying stories that could be put on a stage.

By the 20th century the conversion spectacle was firmly in place. Some of the evangelical movement of the 1960s and ’70s prized radical turnarounds whether it was former drug addicts, biker gang members, or devil worshippers dramatically saved out of sin and into church. These stories were treated as proof of a spiritual revolution. More ordinary accounts like children coming to faith through steady discipleship, or adults drawn quietly through Scripture and friendship, were sidelined in favour of “hardcore” testimonies of deliverance from notorious sin. Spiritual credibility became linked to the shock value of one’s backstory. I love John Piper’s quip that he was saved by grace from a life of alcohol, drugs and debauchery at age 6!

This instinct has now spread across evangelical media. College revival meetings, crusades, youth rallies, and conferences highlight “trophy testimonies.” Some individuals even travel a circuit, selling out venues, telling their story again and again. Their narratives are often touching and genuine, but the implicit message became clear, the more extreme the before-and-after, the more captivating and useful the testimony. It’s why there are books like “The Cross and the Switchblade.” These sell. “The Cross and the Continual Witness and Prayers of my Grandmother,'“ less so.

The Bible certainly uses personal stories to reveal God’s grace. We have Paul’s Damascus Road encounter which is as dramatic as they come. He went from persecuting terrorist to an Apostle after all. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a proper place for this. A testimony can show that “if God can change that person, he can change anyone.” The problem is what happens when the dramatic story becomes the gold standard of God’s work. Quiet stories of lifelong faith, or of God’s preserving grace, start to look second-rate. A hierarchy of grace emerges, with the “ordinary” Christian quietly slipping to the bottom. This has troubled me for a while, in that, when I came to faith I was an angry college student, with an atheistic chip on my shoulder, a red mohawk, and piercings in places we don’t need to go into! When I began to go to church people wanted to hear my ‘story.’ They wanted details, and the juicier the better. I ended up talking more about my sin, than the greatness of God’s grace. And then I started to wonder: who is this actually for?

Big Sins, Bigger Grace? The Theology Behind the Spectacle

Underneath this lies a subtle theology, that the greater the sin, the greater the grace. Few of us would ever say it so bluntly, but we sometimes act as though God’s power is most on display when he rescues people from spectacular depravity. A “boring” conversion can then feel like evidence of a small God, whereas the conversion of a satanist or gang leader is treated as proof of God’s real power. In some ways this is one of the great heresies of the church today, the idea that you must “sin really good” before you can be truly saved by grace. Church kids and lifelong attenders may absorb this without anyone ever saying it aloud. After years of hearing testimonies of sex, drugs, and criminality, we look at their own low-drama story and conclude, ‘I don’t really have a testimony.’ Some people I know have even admitted they secretly wished for a wilder past so that they’d have a “cool” story to share and the attention that comes with it.

But this has also had a dark side. Indeed over the past 20 years we have seen ‘famous’ testimonies that have been embellished to the extent that they are no longer true. But this is the fruit of the culture. When the dramatic is prized, it becomes very tempting to embellish. Testimonies become performances. God becomes a supporting character.

Paul saw this logic coming. In Romans 3:8 he rebukes those who twist his teaching on grace into the idea that “we should do evil that good may come.” Modern evangelical testimony culture would never endorse sinning for the sake of a better story of course. But by consistently spotlighting “super-sinners” turned saints, we give the impression that preventative grace, God keeping someone from a life of debauchery, is less miraculous than rescuing grace. In practice, the prodigal’s dramatic return gets all the airtime, the child who never left the Father’s house is often ignored. And man, can he become grumpy enough to fight over a goat!

Over time, this can mutate into spiritual one-upmanship. The testimony with the darkest past and brightest turnaround “wins.” That is a tragic distortion in a faith built on sheer gift. A lifetime of being kept by grace should not be treated as second-class salvation.

Testimonies for Sale: Storytelling as Currency

The problem, however, is not just cultural instinct. It has been baked into how many churches and ministries operate, especially around publicity and fundraising. Emotional testimonies have become a kind of currency. They fill seats, raise money, and build brands.

It’s no secret that a gripping redemption story right before the offering or an altar call often produces more visible response. Mission agencies and evangelistic organisations know that donors are moved by vivid stories of transformation. So newsletters and platform slots are given to the former terrorist, the liberated sex worker, the atheist professor turned apologist. Again, many of these are genuine and worth celebrating. But the dynamic carries risk. When stories become sales tools, the pressure to keep them exciting is enormous.

We have already seen the fallout. I went down a few rabbit holes recently around Tony Anthony and his book ‘Taming the Tiger’ after reading an article about it’s fabrication. I remember he came to Ireland, but due to work commitments I couldn’t go. The excitement to hear a story that now appears untrue is heartbreaking for many. Or listening to the ‘Satanic Panic’ podcast from Christianity Today, and hearing about Mike Warnke’s bestselling “ex-Satanist high priest” testimony. Eventually his book The Satan Seller collapsed under journalistic scrutiny. The timeline simply didn’t match reality. Similar exposés have unmasked fabricated or highly embellished stories of ex-terrorists and ex-gang members. Even when outright fraud is not involved, there is often selective framing.

Missionaries themselves describe the pressure. They know that “bad PR” of slow progress, discouragement, and unanswered prayer does not raise funds. So newsletters major on victories and gripping stories. Honest accounts of depression, doubt, or apparent lack of fruit are quietly edited out. Converts can become poster-children for campaigns, their stories compressed into a neat arc to justify budgets and stir our emotions. Grace becomes something to package and present, a product to be consumed.

The Pressure to Perform

For ordinary Christians, this creates a deep pressure to perform. It’s not enough simply to know Christ. You need a story worth telling.

Those with quiet faith journeys easily feel invalidated. Someone raised in church may worry that without a catalogue of obvious sins, their salvation is dubious. Others may sink into envy or insecurity, perhaps they need a prodigal phase to make our Christianity real? At the other extreme, some succumb to exaggeration. When grace becomes part of the religious economy, truth is often the first casualty. As a father of three sons, I know that I much prefer their ‘boring’ testimonies shaped within the loving community of faith, and being surrounded by people who loved and lived out devotion to God.

But this also affects those with dramatic pasts too. Converts from very dark backgrounds can end up trapped by their own narrative. Their value to the wider church feels tied to the shock value of their story. Invitations keep coming to tell “how bad it was” before Jesus. Meanwhile, the slow and often painful process of healing and growth receives little attention. Some are even rushed into leadership or platformed simply because their testimony draws crowds, long before their character has had time to be tested. It is not hard to see the dangers.

Commodifying Grace and Losing the Plot

What does it mean when a community treats stories of grace as resources to be packaged and performed? At root, testimony culture goes wrong when it stops treating conversions as mysteries of transforming grace and starts treating them as marketable content. This mirrors wider Western instincts, and our social media platforms are made for this. Churches increasingly operate in a world of branding, clicks, and reels. The Gospel is easily reframed as a product. Dramatic testimonies then become adverts for that product. Bonhoeffer warned about “cheap grace,” forgiveness without repentance or discipleship. Testimony culture offers its own version, grace as spectacle, valued for its emotional punch rather than its call to a cross-shaped life.

Theologically, this narrows our vision of course. When we fixate on a single ‘fireworks’ moment, we diminish quieter works of the Spirit. We underplay the lifelong preservation from obvious sin, the daily sustaining grace that enables small, faithful choices. We almost act as though God mainly works in crisis, not in slow and patient obedience. Mission stories, in particular, often stop at conversion. There’s little space for, “And then over many years God slowly taught me to forgive, to persevere, to love difficult people.” That part doesn’t fit easily on a newsletter. We rarely see people years later. Indeed, some of the people with dramatic conversion stories that I’ve known have been thrust into a limelight that has then consumed them. A relapse led to them being ostracised, or labelled as unruly. Radical transformations rarely stick a landing without discipling, and a community willing to walk with someone through the pain of their past.

This can easily slide into a kind of spiritual voyeurism. Congregations can be enticed by lurid details of a person’s past, safely wrapped in a happy ending. We may come away more entertained than humbled. When testimonies are used primarily to elicit gasps, applause, or financial support, we have turned someone’s encounter with God into a spectacle.

We also end up freezing people in their worst moments. The “ex-satanist,” the “ex-addict,” the “ex-terrorist” can feel as though their identity in the eyes of Christians will always be tied to their pre-conversion life. Those without such histories, meanwhile, may feel spiritually invisible. The church becomes a place where the loudest stories drown out the quiet work of grace.

The Beauty of the Ordinary

The way forward is not to abandon testimonies, but to recalibrate our appetite for them.

We need to recover the beauty of ordinary faithfulness.

Every conversion is a miracle, whether it happens dramatically in a jail cell or gradually through years of bedtime prayers with our kids. Churches can model this by deliberately widening the range of stories they platform. Celebrate the dramatic rescue from addiction, yes. But also give the microphone to the young woman who trusted Christ in childhood and has known His steady keeping ever since. Or to the sceptic who came to faith through a long, slow accumulation of questions, books, cups of tea, conversations, and the witness of friends.

Historically, the church has honoured both kinds of stories. Scripture gives us Paul’s blinding-light encounter and Timothy’s quiet upbringing in the faith through his mum and granny. Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son includes not only the rebel who returns, but also the elder brother who never physically left home yet needed his own heart transformed. The Puritans understood this. Thomas Watson spoke of how God often works in “a still small voice,” especially in those raised under the Word. Such people may not even know exactly when they were converted, grace moves almost secretly. God is no less at work simply because the process was gentle rather than explosive.

Re-centering grace in this way changes how we tell our stories. Testimony becomes less about the entertainment value of the before-and-after and more about the character of the God who met us. We stop asking, “Is my story impressive enough?” and start asking, “How can I showcase God’s goodness and patience in my life?” We give just as much weight to the years after conversion as to the moment of decision. If we can develop a taste for these “uneventful” stories, we will begin to see how far our instincts had drifted from Scripture.

Grace as Gift, Not Performance

At its worst, modern testimony culture has turned grace into something to perform. The implicit script is, Tell us how far you fell, then show us how completely fixed you now are. We clap, we give, we move on.

The Gospel offers something better. Grace is not a story for a stage because it is much greater than that. It is the undeserved favour of God, given in Christ to the utterly unworthy. It comes to the rebel in the biker gang and to the little child taught to pray at bedtime. To the convicted prisoner in a cell and to the pensioner in the care home. It rescues, and it keeps. It justifies in a moment, and then slowly sanctifies over a lifetime. Imagine our churches filled with people who celebrate that whatever their experience, it is the same amazing grace of God that has saved and united them.

In such communities, testimonies would still be told. But they would sound different. They would be less about the depths of our sin and more about the wonder of our Saviour. We would learn to say, with Christians whose stories the world finds “boring”:

Isn’t grace amazing!