Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

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We become disciples through story-keeping, story-sharing, and story-making.

More than mere words strung together to communicate information, stories draw us in using descriptive language and eliciting heartfelt emotions. Some are personal accounts shared with family and friends; others are public, printed in newspapers and magazines, broadcast on radio and television, and tracked on mobile devices. Fantasy and fact, tragedy and triumph, conflict and reconciliation, quest and achievement each encourage our engagement and response. When well crafted, stories invite us to take ownership and become part of the tale.

Stories existed long before recorded history and are an intrinsic part of our lives and cultures. Captured in every medium from oral traditions and cave paintings to broadcast and digital media, stories can entertain and educate. They can record information about cultures, time periods, and places. They can communicate understandings, meanings, and significances. They can inspire identity, purpose, and belonging. They can hold the memory of who we have been as well as guide who we are becoming – individually and collectively. When oriented toward the good, they can cultivate a spirit of personal and corporate responsibility.

Jesus knew that stories form and fashion us and our worldview. He regularly told stories to challenge preconceptions and guide us toward a way of being that more closely realizes what God intends for us. David Haas’ Song of the Body of Christ makes the connection between our stories and God’s:

Chorus: We come to share our story. We come to break the bread. We come to know our rising from the dead.

1. We come as your people. We come as your own. United with each other, love finds a home.
2. We are called to heal the broken, to be hope for the poor. We are called to feed the hungry at our door.
3. Bread of life and cup of promise, in this meal we all are one. In our dying and our rising, may your kingdom come.
4. You will lead and we shall follow. You will be the breath of life; living water, we are thirsting for your light.
5. We will live and sing your praises. "Alleluia" is our song. May we live in love and peace our whole life long.

These lyrics are set to a haunting Hawaiian melody that invites hearers not only to remember Jesus’ story, but also to become part of the story. The combination of words and music that both recall and embody a story highlights the significant role of stories in the process of becoming a disciple.

Evangelization and Formation: Two Sides of the Same Story

The accounts of the Great Commission in the Christian Testament relay at least two views of Jesus’ charge to continue telling God’s story. Mark 16: 15-16, with its emphasis on proclamation, invites all of creation into the story of God’s salvific love. More information-oriented, it suggests the importance of keeping the story of God’s presence alive through the use of human communications, whether oral traditions, written letters, radio and television broadcasts, or tweets and podcasts. From this perspective, disciples collect the wisdom of the past and present and pass it to the next.

Matthew 28:19-20, with its emphasis on faith formation, directs Jesus’ disciples, and us their descendants, to go into the world to make disciples. This view recognizes that everything a community says and does – prayer and worship, teaching and learning, advocacy and outreach – tells a story that converges to “make disciples” and shape belief.

Taken together, these two views of the Great Commission define discipleship as the means by which Jesus and his teachings will perpetuate. Through story-keeping, story-sharing, and story-making, disciples practice and come to know the teaching of a master well enough that they become a master that others emulate.

Story-keeping, Story-sharing, Story-Making

For Christians, the stories of God’s presence in history are the ground from which religion emerges and the means by which Christian faith continues. As story-keepers, community members maintain the wisdom of their tradition and orient the community, as lay theologian Verna Dozier names it, toward the “Dream of God.” As story-sharers, community members share this vision of life with God and invite others into their understanding of it. As story-makers, community members move from faith to action, putting their beliefs into practice, and adding their witness to the Christian story.

Together, story-keeping, story-sharing, and story-making reveal a whole ecology of faith. By interacting with and supporting one another, individuals in a faith community deepen their relationships as they prayerfully engage challenging ideas and issues, gain a vision of life greater than themselves, and go out into the world seeking to create and enact it. The result is that new members and longtime adherents are informed about, formed in, and transformed by faith primarily by their participation in it.

The challenge is that the number of people who know and embody the Christian message is decreasing. In 2007, Stephen Prothero illuminated the state of religious illiteracy by recounting quiz responses from students in his introduction to religious studies course that claim “Ramadan is a Jewish Holiday, Revelation is one of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and Paul led the Israelites on the Exodus out of Egypt.” (“Worshipping in Ignorance,” The Chronicle Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 16, 2007). For those of us who know the story, this should be an invitation to share it.

Called to Be like Philip

The Acts of the Apostles collects stories about Jesus’ earliest followers as they develop a deeper understanding of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and move from hiding in a locked room to proclaiming Jesus’ message. One account (Acts 8:26-40) describes how an angel of the Lord leads Philip through a series of unexpected circumstances to encounter an Ethiopian Eunuch. When they met, the Eunuch was traveling on a typically deserted wilderness road in the middle of the day. The Eunuch had a written copy of Scripture and was reading it. Despite his station and rank, the Eunuch asked Philip to help him understand the story he was reading. With this invitation, Philip leads a story-sharing process that inspires the Eunuch to take the message of the Gospel into his heart and to ask to be baptized. Although Philip does not say much, his actions demonstrate confidence in God’s direction. Because he knew the stories of faith, he could confidently guide the Eunuch’s interpretation. Philip’s passion obviously ignited the Eunuch’s.

Each Christian is called to be like Philip. Jesus commissioned us to know and share the stories of our faith as well as to live in a way that reflects and proclaims them.

Try This

Story-keeping, story-sharing, and story-making are essential elements of discipleship. As you minister in your community, it is helpful to know the critical stories that form and shape you and your community as well as the community members that tell them. Try gathering members of your faith community in small groups (4-6 people) and ask them:

• What are the stories (from your family, your neighborhood, your faith community, or other contexts) that have profoundly shaped you, your family, your community, and/or your faith community?
• Who are the story-keepers that maintain the wisdom of our tradition and orient our community toward the “Dream of God?”
• Who are the story-sharers that share a vision of life with God and invite others to understand it?
• Who are the story-makers that are putting their beliefs into practice and adding their witness to the Christian Story?
• What do you need to more boldly be like Philip and go to unexpected places to share your stories?

Resources

• Center for Digital Story Telling: http://storycenter.org/

• Christian Religious Education: Sharing Our Story and Vision by Thomas Groome (1999, Jossey-Bass) helps to link my story with our story and God’s story.

• Faith Formation 4.0: Introducing an Ecology of Faith in a Digital Age by Julie Lytle (2013, Morehouse Publishing)

• “Losing Ourselves in a Story” by Jeremiah Sierra, ECF Vital Practices, October 6, 2014

• Network of Biblical Storytellers International

• National Story-telling Network

• Song of the Body of Christ, YouTube

• TED Talks on Storytelling: https://www.ted.com/topics/storytelling