Recently I had the chance to speak at a Christian high school for their spiritual emphasis week. It was a great experience. I chose to speak all week about Telling the Gospel Story to ourselves, each other, and the world. I wanted to convey that we need to read our lives through the lens of God's Story, to tell ourselves the True story. The principal kindly (but with some concern) asked me to clarify—what's with the emphasis on story? He was, understandably, concerned by that word.
There is a movement of Christians who call themselves emergent, emerging, new, (insert other trendy title here). It's very hard to give definitions about these groups because they eschew definitions and categories. But all of them are deeply influenced by post-modernism, a worldview which maintains (among other things) that we are so deeply entrenched in our particular context, so limited in our vision, that we cannot possibly get to Absolute Truth. Truth remains forever beyond our grasp, so we must content ourselves with CREATING meaning rather than discovering it. (That's a exceedingly brief introduction and washes over a lot of nuances, but it'll do for right now.)
So, post-modern Christians often end up focusing on story because there is no where else to go; we can't really know what God said, the Bible can't be fully true, it's more important to deal with our feelings and stories than theology, etc. (Again, too brief to do their position justice. I'm summarizing, not giving a complete critique. These people aren't stupid and deserve a fair hearing.)
Here's the thing—while I don't agree with their conclusions, the post-moderns are right about some things. We *are* largely trapped within our vision, our interpretations. We *are* constantly narrating our experience to ourselves. We do not come to life as a Given Set of Facts, which we know or don't. One of the key truths about humans is that we are story-tellers. We pick out facts, weave them together, and find meaning. We make metaphors, create order, find sense. Constantly.
But God made us this way, with an ability to tell TRUE stories, or FALSE ones. And He stepped into the story, and became the Lead Actor, so that the most true version of any person's story must be told as a chapter in the story of the Lamb Who Was Slain. If I am going to tell myself the truth, I have to tell myself the Gospel, and read the events in my life through that lens. I have to tell myself the story of the God Jesus reveals, the Life Jesus gives, the community He creates. My story is His story. I have access to Truth because Truth steps into my story and makes it His.
That is, essentially, the purpose of "Breaking the Ice," a DVD small group resource in the "Convergence" series. Hosted by Don Miller (author of "Blue Like Jazz" fame), each episode consists of a conversation between a theologian/pastor/writer and Miller. The conversations ramble, take tangents, flow—and along the way raise a lot of good questions.
In this entry, Miller talks with Phyllis Tickle, an author/theologian responsible for the recent "Ancient Practices" series. They tackle the topic of Story—do our stories matter? Why should we tell them? What effect do they have on us, on others?
If you are looking for a DVD that will provide answers in a systematic, clear way, don't bother. This will annoy you. But if you are looking to spark conversation about interesting, important topics, this could do the trick. While Miller and Tickle share bits of their stories, and wax philosophical about narrative and place and other literary devices, they touch on deeply important questions that people in community need to learn to ask one another.
For example, Tickle points out that even in the most bland of stories—"I got to the bus station and the bus had already gone"—we pick out *that* event, *those* details because they contain emotion. If the listener pushes a little bit ("What did that feel like? Why did that stick out for you?") they can unearth far deeper issues. And that is how we come to know one another—by listening to our stories with an ear tuned for the Story beneath the story.
It's also in story-telling that we unearth the unspoken value systems we inhabit. In story-telling we reveal who we believe ourselves to be, who we think God is, how we think life is supposed to run.
A skilled small group leader will be able to use this resource to prompt the community to go deeper, explore their narratives and ask important questions. Most importantly, the leader can easily take the discussions to the Gospel—given that we are creatures who tell ourselves stories, how can we tell ourselves and others the True story? How can we weave our narrative into God's larger narrative?
I'd recommend this resource to groups who feel ready to step into knowing one another better and learning to make distinctions between true and false narratives, learning to tell God's story. But groups should be aware that this is not a Bible study; this is not teaching, in the traditional sense. It can, however, prepare the group to more deeply engage Bible study when they get to it.
