I love to tell the Story…

75% of Bible is writtenin story format

10% outline

15% artistic, poetry,essay, proverb, etc.

Over 525 storiesin the Bible

John WalshChristian Storytellers

Post baby boomersare more oral/narrative thinkers

approach world differently.

Baby boomersanalytical

logic, problem solving, make decisions based

on logic. tend tobe individualistic

The Biblical world was filledwith narrative thinkers

If you want to reach the oralthinkers, not analytical thinkers,quick 4 point logic doesn’t work

Four Spiritual Laws might changean analytical thinkers mindthey can make a decision and“move on”

Narratives don’t transitionthat way.

This is why we need stories.

We all have storiesin our lives:-Family stories-Generational traditions-Cultural stories-Myths-folk tales-Aesop/Fairy Tales-Bible Stories-Jokes-Gossip

they all make upOur “pool” ofTrue stories

Stories bringSLOW, PERMANENT CHANGE

If you wantPeople To

Change they needBetter stories!

Acts 2 – Peter preaches onDay of PentecostNot disregarding the rolethe Holy Spirit played onthat day, But Peter wasn’tThat amazing - it’s notthat Great of a sermon.

Jesus spent the previous3 ½ years SwampingPeoples story pools.

Peter got to tellthe last story.

Resurrection!

Swamping the story pool

-Village/Tribe

-canonize story

-add story to pool

-corruption of story

-purge old storiesFrom the pool

-begin making betterDecisions

-slow permanent change

SLOW, PERMANENT CHANGE

It’s NOT A FAST METHOD

It’s not analytical

it’s how the bibleis laid out

Examples

-1960’s New Tribes MissionaryPapua New Guinea

-Southwest Baptist Seminary

-Mitsubishi Power Plant Manager

If you want to go quickly,go alone.

If you want to go far,go together.

African Proverb

Stories help usgo far

- together -

Why myth:

-generally use the supernaturalforces outside of our world toexplain things inside our world

-myths generally interpretNatural Events (in absenceof science people had toexplain life and the worldaround them)

-help explain human nature

-nature of humanity

-serve as a warning (King Midas)

-express a culture’s values & view of the universe

Myth & the church

How it has used myththrough history?

A - reject as pagan

B - embrace the myths ofCulture and begin to weavethe truth of kingdomculture into them.

Better to embracethan reject.

teach truth from thePoint People are at.

Examples:

Jesus used parables

Familiar Jewish stories of theDay - The “2 son” stories

Jesus flips the endings – the son He honors isn’tthe traditional Sonfrom the Jewish stories Turns traditional, familiarcultural story on it’s head

Gospel writers understoodmyths of the day:

John – first few miracles he recordsDirectly 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.

Celtic

– Christianity Survives & Thrives– engages with Celtic culture – make Cultural heroes intosaints, cathedrals of pagan temples

John Bunyan

– Pilgrims Progress – myth and story to tell the truth

Missionaries

– use culture and stories withinthose cultures and tie thetruth to those stories

TurkishDelightTurkishDelight

“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 pouringinto that Form as the housewife longsto see the new jam pouring intothe clean jam jar.

This nags him all day long and gets inthe way of his work and his sleepand his meals. It's like being in love.[...]

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?

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)

Stealing past thewatchful dragons

Lewis understood the power of myth

-how it could affect our hearts.

-How truth could re-gainIt’s real potency.

-How Myth reaches us on adeeper level Than factor logic.

“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 vaguelyreminded of the somewhat similarstories that they had read andenjoyed years before.

“I am aiming at a sort ofpre-baptism of the child’simagination”.

George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis

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 tocome to the truth as they areready to hear it

– Stories are portable

– stories go with uswherever we go

“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.

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.

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 fairytale of the Gospel is, of course, that he is the kingin spite of everything.

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 madefor 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.

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 isthe 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.

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.

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

We among all the world

Should be most comfortable

With the supernatural

We among all the world

Should be most comfortable

With the supernatural

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, courageAnd honor not the little moral issues

•Don’t over explain – it’s insulting

•Don’t chop it up into easilydigestible 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

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 withthe realistic

•Myth can connect to thebigger story, and our ownstories too

•Read scripture not just forthe facts, but also for the metaphor,creation, death, resurrection…

All become much more rich andbeautiful and apply to our livesInstead of cold analytics

Steal past thoseinner dragons

Help truth regainIt’s real potency

TellBetterStories

Steal past thoseinner dragons

Help truth regainIt’s real potency

TellBetterStories