The Christian discipline of bearing personal testimony to the gospel of Christ and the LORD's dealings in one's life. The biblical pattern is established by the Lord Jesus's commission to be His witnesses (Acts 1:8) and by the apostolic example throughout Acts (Peter's witness in Acts 2; Stephen's witness in Acts 7; Philip's witness to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8; Paul's repeated personal-testimony defenses in Acts 22, 24, 26). Witnessing is not the formal preaching of the called minister (though formal preaching is included); it is the substantive testimony of every believer to the truth of the gospel as he or she has come to receive it. The patterns include personal-conversational testimony (the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?); structured defense of the faith (1 Peter 3:15, be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you); deliberate outreach to the unbelieving (Acts 17, Paul at Athens; Acts 18, Paul at Corinth); household witness (the household-baptisms of Acts presuppose witness to the household). The patriarchal-Reformed reader recovers witnessing as the substantive testimony of every believer to the truth as he knows it — in personal conversation, in defense of the faith when challenged, in deliberate outreach to the unconverted, and in household-and-congregation witness that the gospel of Christ is the only saving truth.