This is My Story
Recovering the Art of Storytelling for Spiritual Formation
I vividly recall visiting a church in the thumb of Michigan’s lower peninsula when I was a teenager. I was invited to preach to a small rural Pentecostal church in the morning and evening that day. When the service began the worship leader led the congregation in a few hymns and then paused. To my surprise (as this was not a practice in the church in which I came of age), the pastor got up on stage and asked the congregation if anyone had a story from this week that they wanted to share. And, wouldn’t you know, more than a few people stood one at a time to rehearse tales of God’s faithfulness that week. Without much ado about the stories, the pastor concluded the brief testimony time and turned the mic back over to the worship leader who finished the song set.
I was a bit stunned—the idea of giving someone a hot mic to say anything in the moment (or perhaps drone on a bit too long) was slightly anxiety inducing for me. Yet I was also struck by how in no small way that testimony time was the highlight of the service…and now, 20-some years later, that’s the only part of the service I remember.
Stories are universal to the human experience. Every culture throughout all of history has used story to rehearse past events, express experience, teach their children, educate in religious. devotion, debate, and package complex ideas into a form which listeners can receive more easily.
Peoples’ stories stick with us. I’ve heard thousands of sermons in my life—some incredible…some that probably needed a little work. But regardless of the quality of the preacher’s theological prowess or biblical interpretation…regardless of how great his or her pop culture references, statistics, and anecdotes may have been…I can count on one hand the number of sermons that I can still remember years later. The reason most of those have stuck has been as a result of the preacher’s use of story.
Stories also have a way of bypassing some of the barriers in our hearts that potentially blind us from the truth. It’s no secret that we live in a “double down” confirmation-bias driven time when people do not like to have their ideas upended and their minds changed. By stories open us up to change in a way that more scientific and logical means of communication simply do not do.
However, in the present moment in Western culture, we often struggle with the art of using the power of story to communicate a point. There are notable exceptions, such as Soft White Underbelly, that records the stories of those living in the shadow side of Los Angeles. Another, specific to the story of the life of Jesus is The Chosen, which has been wildly popular in turning people’s attention to the story of Jesus as recorded in the gospels (with a bit of respectful poetic license taken).
The Power of Story
Within the Christian tradition, we have a rich history of storytelling. We get that from our founder—Jesus—who, himself, was a prolific storyteller. So much so that Mark hyperbolically noted, “He did not say anything to them without using a parable” (Mark 4:34a). The manner in which Jesus taught theology was in parables. He debated with the religious leaders through a combination of questions and parables. The life of Jesus itself is recorded to us, four times over, in narrative form. On our created storytelling nature, Scott Moreau says:
God created us as storytellers, which is not surprising since God himself is a storyteller, as evidenced by the vast majority of the Bible being narrative rather than didactic (teaching).
Humans are wired for story. It’s how we make sense of the world. Stories are social glue that anchor people in their place within their culture, help them understand the past they inherit, and aid them in making a great cultural deposit in their posterity for after they have passed on.
Most story types fall into two broad categories: Metanarratives and micronarratives. Metanarratives (which anthropologists call “myths”) are the grand stories that frame life. Some are true, some are not, and some are a mixture in between (e.g., the Viking sagas are a great example of historical accounts likely with a great deal of embellishment). Some metanarratives are handed to us by our culture (e.g., “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”), some by the Scriptures, some by our social spheres, and some by our religious tradition. They help anchor us in times of uncertainty, reduce anxiety, and reinforce cultural perspectives of what is honorable, right, and good for a person to do.
Micronarratives are our personal stories and shared perspectives. They can be experiential, expressing our personal autonomy, critiquing cultural narratives given to us, bond people in interpersonal communication, and even—through fables, parables, and more—connect a smaller, anecdotal story to a larger truth about the world.
The Bible is Sacred Story
The Bible is not simply a collection of written works by a few dozen authors over a 1,600 year period of time (though it is certainly that, too). It is not a collection of religious rules or tales of bygone era. It is a singular, coherent story of what it means to live together as God’s covenantal family—summarized most succinctly a phrase that appears in various forms throughout the entire Bible: I will be your God and you will be my people.
Over 75% of the contents of the Bible is explicitly narrative. This should not surprise us as cultures before the Enlightenment (as well as many cultures throughout the world today), teach their young and disciple religious members through the power of story.
Christianity’s history is no stranger to this. Our lineage is filled to the brim with stories of martyrs, exemplars of the faith, those who labored diligently in the often-forgotten places, and much more. For centuries we’ve told stories about what we believe about God in the architecture of our church buildings, our music, our visual art, and more. We rehearse testimonies in church services like the little church in the thumb of Michigan and around campfires.
We are woefully foolish to overlook the power of story on our spiritual formation and how storytelling, itself, is a spiritual discipline— “They overcame by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony, for they did not love their lives unto death” (Rev. 12:11).
Postmodern Culture and the Challenge of Narrative
The rise of postmodern (i.e., post-Enlightenment) thought has created a shift in our culture in relation to how we deal with the grand metanarratives. Increasingly people meet metanarrative with suspicion—handed down to us by institutions (who, themselves, are met with suspicion) and often partly correct or incomplete (e.g., yeah, Columbus did sail in 1492, but we know that’s not the whole story. Leif Erikson arrived 500 years earlier, as did indigenous populations thousands of years before that). Metanarratives are not accepted straight away as they once were, but are more prone to suspicion and on their own possess less influence over the average person than they did in previous generations. Our culture has moved from asking the question, “is it true?” toward asking, “is it true for you?”
This has enormous implications on how we share our Christian faith. Unchurched people increasingly don’t care what the Bible says. So when you or I are discussing a social issue and back up our claim with, “Well, the Bible says x, y, and z,” your average person today will say something to the effect of, "So what?”
Instead, Soon Chan Rah, in his book The Next Evangelicalism talks about how postmoderns (which are typically thought of as the generational cohorts of Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, though that’s painting with a broad brush) construct understanding of truth through the micronarratives around them—that is the stories of their peers, family, and those influential people in their lives with whom they have relationally-built trust.
This represents a massive pivot in the way many Christians talk about their faith, but one that isn’t all that bad. The need of the hour actually orients us toward a way of communicating that our spiritual mothers and fathers handed down to us, the way Scripture itself talks about God, and the way many Christians in the majority world still approach spiritual formation—storytelling.
Postmoderns will tune out when you talk about abstract doctrines and proof-text Bible verses. But they will lean in when you talk about your experience in following Jesus. Many elderly folks assume that young people don’t want to hear from them, but that could not actually be further from the truth (as evidenced by the widespread social media phenomenon of younger people creating influencer pages with their elderly relatives to broadcast their wisdom in a host of areas like war-time cooking, home repair, “Questions for a Retired CIA agent”, and wrenching on cars).
Most postmoderns love a good story—and a good personal story that connects to what it means to follow Jesus…that’s not only a good story…that’s called spiritual formation. It is through these personal testimonies of faith that many people today come to understand and embrace the metanarrative of Scripture as a whole, as they see personal story of someone they trust connected to the unfolding grand story of God’s redemptive work in the world.
Jesus as the Anchor of our Story
Sharing our experiences and proverbial wisdom help us form strong, bonded relationships. Telling stories about our childhood and our family history help our children feel a sense of rootedness in their family story. Rehearsing the stories about the founding and pivotal moments in our local church help new members identify themselves in the unfolding history of your church.
But fundamentally, it is Jesus who is the One to whom our story is anchored. Of Jesus, St. Paul reminded the Colossians that,
Because all things were created by him;
Both in the heavens and on the earth, the things that are visible and the things that are invisible.
Whether they are thrones or powers, or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. (Col. 1:16, CEB)
Jesus is not only the origin of our story—not only is he the embodiment of the story of the promise of our redemption and the renewal of creation—but he is the binding element through which the whole metanarrative of creation history is held together. John takes this a step further when he calls Jesus the divine Logos (i.e., “Word”)—the ultimate “meta” of the universe, holding all things together in himself.
So while our stories having formative power on their own, they take on a redemptive power as they point people to the Redeemer. When we rehearse our testimonies we call to mind God’s faithfulness, remind ourselves of his ongoing and ever present work among us, and invite others to see how their own stories can be connected to the unfolding divine metanarrative woven by the hand of Christ in the fabric of creation.
Jesus invites us to not only find our own place in his story, but to help others do the same through sharing our testimony, our experience in walking in the way of Jesus. I’ll leave you with this beautiful summation by British theologian Lesslie Newbigin,
The congregation should live by the true story and center their life in the continual remembering and relating of the true story, and meditating on it and expounding it in relation to contemporary events so that contemporary events are truly understood, and in sharing the sacrament by which we are incorporated into the dying and rising of Jesus so that we are at the very heart of the story.