Telling a story vs. joining a story

My friend Jeff Chandler is a graphic artist and works for an advertising agency. He sent me this great post from an advertising website. In a time when everything seems to be market driven (including the church), it's a refreshing look at entering into the lives of real people. As a church we need to think about the difference between "telling" a person's story and "joining" a person's story. From the post:

Telling:

• All about the storyteller
• One sided communication
• Story is potentially unwanted
• Story is, well...a story

Joining:

• All about ALL participants
• Two-way communication
• Story is living and evolving
• The story keeps going when you stop talking

If the church would stop "talking" and start "joining" in the stories of real people I don't think we would ever have to have another conversation about evangelism. Growth and evangelism are not goals (though that's what the contemporary church in a free market economy tends to make them), they are products of a healthy community of Christ-followers who are deeply aware of their own stories and how those stories intersect with God's story. We don't need to "bring" God anywhere, we need to "join" in what he is already doing.

Here's the full post.
 

Comments

[Bin]

What aweinspirng words. It makes perfect sense. And a great blog.

Bin

[Jeff Zimmerman]

Great post Tim. Lately in ministry we've been talking a lot more about being part of the story verses just telling great stories. While telling great stories do have value, we recognize the amazing potential a story that is being written has. Instead of a 20 or 30 minute messages on sunday mornings we now have a short devo that turns into the students writing poems or creating artwork with what is going through their mind when it comes to the issues we raise. After this we will open up the floor for any kid that would want to share what he or she created that morning. Doing this has given way to a story that is still being written verses me telling our students tales of great things and then hoping they, at some point, create their own story. Eventually we would like to get to the point where future ideas, programs, or service is created from the story that is being written in this hour on Sunday. All this to say, great post Tim, it's right where we need to be.