How to create a regular slot on Sundays for everyday faith stories

1. An ‘everyday faith slot’ aims to widen our understanding and imagination around being disciples Sunday to Saturday, so because of this, the only hard rule is that this has to be about a role in everyday life – not a church role, project or task.
2. It also works well if the person can draw on a Bible reading, prayer or other point of personal inspiration – though if people find this tricky you can skip this bit.
3. Keeping this testimony focused and not too long is a key part to their effectiveness.
4. Having diverse voices is also really important and do also think about including children and young people.

To help steer an everyday faith slot, you can arrange or ask the participant to film themselves on their phones (details on that below) with short answers to the following questions:

1. What’s your name and where do you live?
2. What do you love about your [context/job/role]?
3. What are some of the opportunities and the challenges?
4. How does your faith encourage you in these [thinking about Bible passages or prayers]?

• You can film the questions one at a time or all in one go.
• You only need to give around 30 seconds on each question.
• If you are doing an everyday faith slot in person, remember to give people the questions in advance so that they can think through their responses.
• It is probably best to film people separately if you are going to use the slot online. It is also important to get a person’s permission before putting a film up online. This is especially the case if someone is talking about a public or employed role.

These are some practicalities to bear in mind for filming (for further information and advice on many aspects of filming and video, search the Church of England’s Learning Labs blogs). Meanwhile these basic tips may help:

• Please try to film in landscape (phone on its side).
• If filming solo, place the phone on a surface – i.e. a shelf. If someone is filming you, then sitting is usually better for keeping a steady hand.
• Filming outdoors is tricky because of wind noise, so indoors is better.
• The microphones on most phones are good, but you do need to speak up to make sure you can be clearly heard.
• You should have your head and shoulders in the shot and try to have something interesting in the background – a picture or a set of shelves for example.
• Natural light from a window is the best lighting – the window should be behind the camera to give you the best light.

I once heard someone say “I was a publisher in another life…” meaning of course that their previous career had been in publishing and their current one felt very different.

It got me thinking about how sometimes it can feel as though we live lots of different lives all at once and I came up with the idea of creating a prayer station in church where people could bring in something (or a photo of something) from one of their ‘other lives’. A local artist brought in a well-used brush and a hospital doctor brought in a picture of the hospital where she works. We even had someone asking for divine inspiration for the team they support (a football scarf)!

I gathered them all together in a display at the side of church as a visual reminder of bringing our whole selves to God – and that God is with us wherever we are. I made a card to be part of the display which had a prayer asking God to bless us in every part of our lives and for Him to use all our talents, our professional skills and our everyday conversations to His glory.