But naturally there is a push-back to this idea that cannot be ignored. For no matter how many stories we share or listen to each week in worship, at some point this push-back idea will surface and have to be addressed. Let me phrase it as a question:
What happens we don’t have any more stories to tell or share?
This question has been with me since I finished my D.Min work at Pittsburgh Seminary. For while I believe that story-sharing and story-telling are a more effective method for equipping church leaders that does not address the question that I asked above. At some point we could run out of stories to share. . .
My friend Graham, in his most recent book, And the Church Actually Changed, says it this way:
“Part of our not having stories is we don’t look for transforming stories. In fact, I think many of us in the mainline Protestant churches feel uncomfortable using . . . stories. They don’t feel intellectual enough.”
In the church we are trained, and conditioned, to pass on information to each other in short bursts and encounters. When someone asks “How was your day?” We share information. We don’t often share transformation. But the potential is there to change our behavior and responses. For instance, yesterday at a committee meeting with the presbytery, a colleague asked me “How are you?” I groaned and said something about how sore and tired I was from helping a family move into a new home over the past weekend. My answer was not transformational, I was sharing information with him. I wanted to let this individual know that I was tired, sore, and yet happy to be together as a committee.
My answer did not include any thoughts about how I knew that if I didn’t help the family would overwork themselves and become angry with each other and could speak hurtfully to one another. I wanted to return the act of service with a cheerful attitude as others have served me—and so I helped. I did not say that as I drove with my son to the new house that I was thankful to be able to work with him. I enjoyed listening to him talk to me about college issues and knowing that the days of him living with Jennifer and I were closer to their end than their beginning.
I skipped right to the part where I shared information. . . As I suspect that you might as well.
We want to have all the answers when we evangelize and share God’s word. Even if we have the most well-crated evangelistic approach, we can run out of stories because we don’t look for them and we don’t elevate the necessity of them. If Graham is correct, and I suspect that he is, the issue that is confronting us is that we have been conditioned away from story-sharing because it does not feel appropriate when we engage each other—but it is, and I think that it is necessary.
I wonder what could happen to our daily interactions if we made deliberate choices to share the things of our lives that are transformational first, and let the informational sharing come later?
Blessings
Derek
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