I love to tell the Story…

1. I love to tell the Story…

2. 75% of Bible is written in story format 10% outline 15% artistic, poetry, essay, proverb, etc. Over 525 stories in the Bible

3. John Walsh Christian Storytellers Baby boomers analytical logic, problem solving, make decisions based on logic. tend to be individualistic Post baby boomers are more oral/narrative thinkers approach world differently. The Biblical world was filled with narrative thinkers

4. If you want to reach the oral thinkers, not analytical thinkers, quick 4 point logic doesn’t work Four Spiritual Laws might change an analytical thinkers mind they can make a decision and “move on” Narratives don’t transition that way. This is why we need stories.

5. We all have stories in our lives: -Family stories -Generational traditions -Cultural stories -Myths -folk tales -Aesop/Fairy Tales -Bible Stories -Jokes -Gossip they all make up Our “pool” of True stories

6. Stories bring SLOW, PERMANENT CHANGE If you want People To Change they need Better stories!

7. Acts 2 – Peter preaches on Day of Pentecost Not disregarding the role the Holy Spirit played on that day, But Peter wasn’t That amazing - it’s not that Great of a sermon. Jesus spent the previous 3 ½ years Swamping Peoples story pools. Peter got to tell the last story. Resurrection!

8. Swamping the story pool -Village/Tribe -canonize story -add story to pool -corruption of story -purge old stories From the pool -begin making better Decisions -slow permanent change

9. SLOW, PERMANENT CHANGE It’s NOT A FAST METHOD It’s not analytical it’s how the bible is laid out

10. Examples -1960’s New Tribes Missionary Papua New Guinea -Southwest Baptist Seminary -Mitsubishi Power Plant Manager

11. If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. African Proverb Stories help us go far - together -

12. Why myth: -generally use the supernatural forces outside of our world to explain things inside our world -myths generally interpret Natural Events (in absence of science people had to explain life and the world around them) -help explain human nature -nature of humanity -serve as a warning (King Midas) -express a culture’s values & view of the universe

13. Myth & the church How it has used myth through history? A - reject as pagan B - embrace the myths of Culture and begin to weave the truth of kingdom culture into them. Better to embrace than reject. teach truth from the Point People are at.

14. Examples: Jesus used parables Familiar Jewish stories of the Day - The “2 son” stories Jesus flips the endings – the son He honors isn’t the traditional Son from the Jewish stories Turns traditional, familiar cultural story on it’s head

15. Gospel writers understood myths of the day: John – first few miracles he records Directly opposed to Greek myths in the culture. Water to wine – Dionysius – prevalent in their culture – knows the myth – party god – not the real one Healings – Escalapius - John 4 - by a pool, official’s son – known as the healing god – symbol – stick w/ snake on it feeding of 5000 – Demeter - Goddess of grain John knew the myths of his culture. Jesus is the real wine god, the real healer, the real god of grain.

16. Celtic – Christianity Survives & Thrives – engages with Celtic culture – make Cultural heroes into saints, cathedrals of pagan temples John Bunyan – Pilgrims Progress – myth and story to tell the truth Missionaries – use culture and stories within those cultures and tie the truth to those stories

17. Turkish Delight

18. “In the Author's mind there bubbles up every now and then the material for a story. For me it invariably begins with mental pictures. This ferment leads to nothing unless it is accompanied with the longing for a Form: verse or prose, short story, novel, play or what not. When these two things click you have the Author's impulse complete. It is now a thing inside him pawing to get out. He longs to see that bubbling stuff pouring into that Form as the housewife longs to see the new jam pouring into the clean jam jar. This nags him all day long and gets in the way of his work and his sleep and his meals. It's like being in love.[...]

19. On that side (as Author) I wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say. Then of course the Man in me began to have his turn. I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ?

20. I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?” ~C.S. Lewis, "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said" (1st pub. Nov 1956)

21. Stealing past the watchful dragons Lewis understood the power of myth -how it could affect our hearts. -How truth could re-gain It’s real potency. -How Myth reaches us on a deeper level Than fact or logic.

22. “His idea, as he once explained to me, was to make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life. He hoped that they would be vaguely reminded of the somewhat similar stories that they had read and enjoyed years before. “I am aiming at a sort of pre-baptism of the child’s imagination”. George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis

23. Parker Palmer says: “tell the truth, but tell it slant” – Stories honor the listener – Stories don’t force 3 points of “truth” down our throats – stories allow each listener to come to the truth as they are ready to hear it – Stories are portable – stories go with us wherever we go

24. “As for the king of the kingdom himself, whoever would recognize him? He has no form or comeliness. His clothes are what he picked up at a rummage sale. He hasn't shaved for weeks. He smells of mortality.

25. We have romanticized his raggedness so long that we can catch echoes only of the way it must have scandalized his time in the horrified question of the Baptist's disciples, 'Are you he who is to come?' (Matt. 11:13); in Pilate's 'Are you the king of the Jews?' (Matt 27:11) You with pants that don't fit and a split lip? in the black comedy of the sign they nailed over his head where the joke was written out in three languages so nobody would miss the laugh.

26. There is no less danger and darkness in the Gospel than there is in Brothers Grimm, but beyond and above all there is the joy of it, this tale of a light breaking into the world that not even the darkness can overcome. But the whole point of the fairy tale of the Gospel is, of course, that he is the king in spite of everything.

27. The frog turns out to be the prince, the ugly duckling the swan, the little gray man who asks for bread is the great magician with the power of life and death in his hands, and though the steadfast tin soldier falls into the flames, his love turns out to be fireproof. That is the Gospel, this meeting of darkness and light and the final victory of light. That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, the one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.

28. To preach the Gospel in its original power and mystery is to claim in whatever way the preacher finds it possible to claim that once upon a time is this time, now, and here in the dark wood is the light that gleams at the heart like a jewel, and the ones who are to live happily ever after are... all who labor and are heavy laden, the poor naked wretches wheresoever they be.” Buechner, Frederick. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. San Francisco: HarperCollins 1977.

29. Embrace the big and the irrational – not everything has to make sense. Embrace the bigger story – preach the tale that is too good not to be true. Too big to contain in our little churches, even in Christianity as a whole – all truth is God’s truth.

30. We are from somewhere else, from Oz, looking glass land, Narnia – the part where our best dreams come from, it is as if we were just born yesterday. Because we are also, all of us, children still. So let the preacher remember this, and preach to us not just as men and women of the world, but as children too, but often more simple hearted than we suppose and hungry for magic and mystery. Buechner, Frederick

31. We among all the world Should be most comfortable With the supernatural

32. Tips for Story tellers • Tell Better Stories! • Know Who you Are speaking to • and where they are coming from! • Teach on the bigger concepts love, • redemption, forgiveness, courage • And honor not the little moral issues • Don’t over explain – it’s insulting • Don’t chop it up into easily • digestible chunks! • Not all people’s faith journey • is found through cold, • hard rational facts • Become a good story teller, • or find one to listen too • Be a collector of great • stories and moments

33. Tips for Story tellers Con’t • Find good story books • Use experiential story telling • Learn to tell YOUR story • connect with their story • Connect the fantastic with • the realistic • Myth can connect to the • bigger story, and our own • stories too • Read scripture not just for • the facts, but also for the metaphor, • creation, death, resurrection… • All become much more rich and • beautiful and apply to our lives • Instead of cold analytics

34. Steal past those inner dragons Help truth regain It’s real potency Tell Better Stories