Missional Church: Storytelling & Storyliving

Another messy post full of new thoughts...

The theme of Story and storytelling colors so much of the emerging church. I think the missional church will focus on Story. The Bible isn't a random set of stand alone texts, but is essentially the Story of redemption, the Story of God, the Story of the Son of God, the Story of sin and salvation. However we say it, it is Story. And much of what God communicates to us is in the form of Story. Whether it's the parables of Jesus, or much of Old Testament narrative, or the early church in Acts, we get a lot of what God wants us to know from the Story, not just the "bullet points of faith."

So the missional church should be a storytelling community, where we take God's Story and retell it.

But one of the things I've noticed in the books by some in the EC is that when Story or storytelling is explained, it's often in the context of finding creative ways to tell the Story through experience. But this isn't typically explained as the personal experience of living it. It is the experience of imitating it. So we may create the retelling of a healing story of Jesus by having some people be the blind and others the crippled, and one is Jesus. Or we may use some sort of art to experience the Story.

I love art, and I do think it's an important part of life and God's community. I'm not saying it doesn't have an important place. But I wonder if there is an overemphasis on the creativity that aids the experience of the Story. I wonder if the missional church wouldn't be better served through the plain telling of the Story with exhortations to live it, and let the Holy Spirit drive it home as we do it. In other words, we could blindfold ourselves to see how it feels to be healed of blindness. Or we could serve a blind person an evening a week. It's the difference between faking experience of a story and storyliving.

We already have a canvas for experiencing Story, our own bodies and families and churches and community. We can act out a play about something Jesus did, but isn't it better to act it out in our community by living as Jesus lived? Won't that make the spoken story far more real for us and those around us?

I think the EC is spending a lot of time trying to think of creative ways to tell and experience spoken messages (or experience them without speaking). There's a lot of good in that. But the natural, normal way to experience the message is to live it and have it lived on you by others. That's missional, that's the truest art...to become the canvas of suffering and love and forgiveness for a world that needs to hear/see the gospel.

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Missional Church: Post 1, Post 2

Comments

[Scot McKnight]

Very good post Steve.
Tell the story of redemption; live the story of redemption; and let the Lord's supper be the primary embodiment or the primary "acted out" story time. Is there anything more clear than this is a story we each get to participate in than the Lord's supper?
I did a bit of this in The Jesus Creed (so forgive me if you've read that chp).

[Steve McCoy]

Not there yet Scot, but I'll look for it when I get there. Thanks for the encouragement, and for pointing to the LS. Great thought.

[Terry McCann]

While I was reading this post, I was remembering a church conference I attended several years ago. The speaker for this particular session was advocating the use of storytelling, of the creative arts, of painting word pictures in order to “enhance” the gospel. His rationale stemmed from the fact that the greatest teacher of all time taught with parables.

I love reading the parables that Christ used to teach His disciples and others. But, can this style of teaching be equated to his instructions to “pray this way”. If Jesus used parables (stories) to teach and also to set an example of how to teach, why do we not find examples of this in the teachings of John, Paul and Peter?

I agree with Steve. There can be no substitute for experience; to live out the gospel, to experience firsthand those things which Christ taught. Dramas and skits are, at best, helpful. However, in some churches these tools have been elevated to necessity with the mindset that the message cannot be understood without these tools. We have substituted the eye-opening power of the Holy Spirit with man-made devices. I am in no way saying that there is no place for creative expression. But let us not forget that “the Word will not return void”

[Aj]

Coming from an evangelical Quaker tradition my experience has been struggle with the opposite: removing things that might aid in the experience for fear that it might becoming idolized (which need for simplicity has become an idol in itself, but I digress). Personally I ache to strip away the superfluous and get to the heart of it all. As I've been writing on my blog, I've dabbled in writing articles or essays, but they seem to fall flat. The entries that resonate with me coming from sharing my personal experiences and encounters: it has more depth and honesty. Thanks so much for sharing this post: an excellent prompt to consider what's truly important.