Testify! Project Moves from Planning to Public Witness
Since launching earlier this year, the Testify! Project has continued to grow into a distinctive and inspiring program rooted in faith, storytelling, and artistic expression. Funded through the Lilly Endowment National Storytelling Initiative on Christian Faith and Life, Testify! invites participants to “show and tell the living scripture” through creative forms of Christian testimony.
Testify! celebrates the creative energy emerging in Black Christianity, where artists are not only making beauty but also proclaiming witness. Through music, writing, visual art, spoken word, and other creative practices, the project helps people explore how faith stories can be shared in fresh and meaningful ways.
The project moved from planning to implementation in June with its inaugural retreat on June 12–13 at the Prindle Institute for Ethics. More than 20 artists attended, including the first seven artists who will be featured in the fall Testify! Live event. Retreat sessions centered on Luke 8, highlighting themes of creation, healing, comfort, transformation, rest, belonging, and commissioning.
That work will move into public witness this fall with Testify! Live, the project’s flagship gathering, on October 2 at Eastern Star Church in Indianapolis. The event will bring testimony to life through music, visual art, spoken word, dance, and other creative expressions, including original works developed through collaboration between artists and people sharing stories of faith. Indianapolis will host the first of five Testify! Live gatherings planned across the country through 2030, creating opportunities for individual stories of faith to become a shared experience of testimony, art, and community.
“Show and tell the living scripture.”
The Testify! team is led by Grant Director Dr. Nick Peterson, Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Worship and Assistant Director of the PhD in African American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric Program at CTS. The team also includes co-developer and Artistic Director Julian Davis Reid and National Program Director Katrina Owens.
