And the Winner Is…

Before I announce the winner, I want to THANK ALL OF YOU who subscribed and took time to fill out the survey.  It’s such a pleasure to share this blog with you, and the information from the survey will be invaluable as Next Step Speaker Services moves forward and grows.  Ya’ll gave me enough suggestions for blog topics for years to come!!

I’m also thrilled that we have enough clients that we now have a little waiting list!  For those of you who have been our firsts, we’re so thankful that you’re with us.  We can’t wait to get to know more of you personally.

And now…drum roll please…our winner of a free service of your choosing is…. Kelli Womack from Sept. 20 at 10:48!  Kelli please go to the “Request Information” page and fill out all the contact information so that we can have our first phone conversation.  I can’t wait to hear your story of why God has provided this especially for YOU!

Our next principle from Made to Stick is credible.  The Heath brothers go into fascinating detail about what makes an idea credible, but I want to focus on one main way for Christian women to make our messages credible.  I think authenticity and using personal stories make our messages credible.

I’ll use myself as an example this time.  For years I didn’t share my testimony as part of my messages.  I have what I jokingly call “My Boring Testimony”.  Like some of you, I was a girl who was born into a Christian family,  raised in the church and gave my heart to Jesus early in life.  Because of His grace, I was saved from many of the visible pitfalls of living separated from God.  So I didn’t tell my story.  I didn’t tell it, because it didn’t seem dramatic enough.  I also didn’t tell it, because I really do know that I’m not one iota different from anyone else who needs a Savior.  That encompasses everybody, but I didn’t want to hurt my sisters in the room who have very different stories or make them feel that I did think I was better.

So I stayed silent on that issue (while talking about most others!) until God lit a fire under me to tell my story and surrounded me with people who kept telling me why it is important.  That’s a different post for a different day, but I want touse  my story to say that each of us has an important story.  Each story has value and we become credible when we tell our own.

It’s fine to use stories from the internet or from a book you read, but there is no story that will give your message credibility like your own.  So I’m telling mine in a new message called The Untying of a Straight-Laced Girl.  How about you?  What’s your story to tell?