Telling the Gospel Through Story
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Telling the Gospel Through Story

Evangelism That Keeps Hearers Wanting More

Christine Dillon

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eBook - ePub

Telling the Gospel Through Story

Evangelism That Keeps Hearers Wanting More

Christine Dillon

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About This Book

Outreach Magazine Resource of the YearEverybody loves a good story.In an age when prepackaged gospel formulations leave people cold, well-told Bible stories can be used powerfully by God to touch people's hearts and draw them to himself.After ministry in both Western and non-Western contexts, church planter Christine Dillon has discovered that Bible storying is far more effective than most other forms of apologetics or evangelistic presentations. In fact, non-Christians actually enjoyed storying and kept coming back for more. Storying provides solid biblical foundations so listeners can understand, apply and respond to the gospel, and then go on to fruitful maturity in God's service.This book includes practical guidance on how to shape a good story, how to do evangelism through storying and how to lead Bible discussions. With particular insights for trainers and those working in crosscultural contexts, this guide provides you with concrete steps for sharing the Story that everyone needs to hear.

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Information

Publisher
IVP
Year
2012
ISBN
9780830866922

PART ONE

FOUNDATIONS

1

Why Storying?

When I think back on the many conversations I’ve had about the gospel over the years, I often regret that I hadn’t known about storying for all of them. For example, many years ago during a holiday in Malaysia, two Christian friends and I ended up on an almost deserted island. It was the month of Ramadan, and the heat combined with the tradition of fasting between sunrise and sunset ensured that the four young men looking after us had little energy. What they did was sit around and talk about religion. Soon they began asking us our opinions. We talked with them for more than an hour each day. I did share some of the exodus story, but I don’t remember any more of the conversation. Although God can work through other styles of evangelism, the discussions would have been much richer if storying had been involved.
At the Cape Town 2010 Lausanne Congress, many people observed that poor Bible teaching and discipleship result in a lack of transformation in people’s thinking.[1] Weak evangelism is also part of the problem. There can be an unbiblical push for decisions before listeners have understood enough of the gospel, with the result that they don’t come to new life. Instead they merely add a layer of superficial thinking on top of their original religious ideas.
There are many effective ways to teach the Bible, including good preaching, evangelistic Bible study and courses that explore Christianity. However, Bible storying is increasingly acknowledged as effective and advantageous. Of course, this method of sharing the gospel is not new. It’s as old as the Bible itself. However, since the 1980s there has been a renewed emphasis on using Bible stories as a teaching tool with adults. It seems to have started in crosscultural missions contexts with organizations such as New Tribes Mission and the Southern Baptists’ International Mission Board. Using storying in a Western context has been slower to take off. Perhaps missionaries have not realized that it applies in their home contexts, or people have wrongfully dismissed it as a tool for oral learners only.
So if Bible storytelling is such an effective tool, why isn’t everyone using it? Well, many don’t know about it and have never seen it demonstrated. Most people need to see storying in action before they become enthusiastic about it. And even those who have heard about storying may hold misperceptions that prevent them from getting started.

Misconceptions About Storying

Use the word “story” with people, and they will generally first think of simple children’s fairy tales. Stories are often relegated to Sunday school class or bedtime. Kendall Haven, a storyteller and researcher, summarizes this way:
Stories suffer from a bad reputation—the word tends to be associated with fairy tale, untrue, suspect. . . . You resort to stories if you have a weak case or if you’re hiding the truth. . . . Stories have been sidetracked into the kiddy corner and labeled, “just for fun.” We believe that story is the opposite of logic, that stories aren’t effective for conveying serious and important concepts. And without even consciously pausing to consider either the veracity or implications of our assumptions, we set aside the most powerful communications and teaching tools available to humans, and then idly wonder why our efforts to communicate and to teach concepts, ideas, beliefs, values, attitudes and facts do not succeed.[2]
In contrast to their reputation, Haven emphasizes that stories are excellent vehicles for facts.[3] They increase our motivation and enthusiasm to learn. Without stories, the learning process can be tedious and dull. Do you remember studying for mathematics, history and science exams? Many of us were taught to memorize lists of facts, formulas and dates. The concepts were abstract and disconnected from our lives. How many of these facts and formulas do you remember now?
Haven tells of a physics teacher who was struggling to help his class learn what they needed to know. The students simply weren’t interested. So the teacher decided to experiment with storytelling. For each scientist whose theories he wanted the students to understand, he told stories about the scientist’s life and how he or she came up with the theories. He also painted a picture using stories of the world they lived in. He was amazed at the difference in his students. Suddenly they were interested in science and doing well in the class. Quite a few even went to the library and did extra research because they’d become so motivated.
Similarly, an international company tried for years to motivate its salespeople to offer better customer service. The firm used traditional lecture methods in its training programs but failed to see any results. Then a speaker told a true story about someone who embodied the kind of service attitude the company wanted its employees to demonstrate. Now the staff understood. Motivation and enthusiasm levels changed markedly. Soon the sales force had a number of true stories to tell at seminars, and employees were competing to show good service.[4] If the corporate world makes use of stories to train its “evangelists,” how much more so should the church?
Stories can help change motivation and values. In addition, stories ensure that information is remembered readily and accurately.[5] Bible stories help hearers to want to be more like Jesus in character, values and priorities, and they help listeners know the truth about him.
A second barrier to getting involved in storytelling is the belief that “it’s not my style.” This was one of my own objections to getting started, and it’s common among seminary graduates and full-time church workers. Bible colleges generally teach abstract, systematic communication styles. But most biblical models use stories and nonabstract styles. (Perhaps this explains why many listeners find our teaching hard to listen to.) Change is difficult. It is especially difficult for those of us who are locked into nonnarrative styles or are already competent using other styles of evangelism and discipleship. Those who most readily embrace storytelling are those who have struggled for years with the model they were given and are desperate to find an evangelism and discipling style that suits them better.
Some introverts may have struggled with any form of evangelism since the word tends to be associated—mistakenly—with extroversion. Storying is one form of evangelism, among many, that can be performed by introverts. It doesn’t have to be done in a large group but can be conducted one-to-one or in small groups. It is a relief to know that we don’t have to be fantastic public speakers or naturally outgoing to be successful in storytelling.
Another objection to involvement in storytelling is simply, “I can’t do this.” Many cultures have lost the habit of storytelling. We might still read stories out loud but we seldom tell them. Even in cultures where storytelling is a traditional art, the advent of television and the Internet means that they are rapidly losing this ability as well. A large percentage of storying trainees say, “I’m not good at telling stories.” One wonderful thing about stories is that even a poor storyteller can still communicate. The story itself carries the listener along. A poor story is normally better than no story. Thankfully, storytelling is an art in which improvement is possible. Practice can indeed make perfect.
Some people also doubt that adults will listen to the gospel in story form. We might even feel embarrassed to tell a story to an adult. Won’t he or she feel insulted by such a simple approach? Won’t people laugh or even ridicule us? Surely an adult’s attention won’t be held by something so simple. Adults need something “deeper,” don’t they?
Jim is a member of a Bible study group who has not only experienced storying but has also been trained to use it in evangelism. Despite all the accounts he has heard about its effectiveness and a positive experience himself, he still doubts that nonchurched adults will listen to stories. His doubts mean that he refuses to even try. Instead, he either avoids evangelism altogether or tries other methods with which he feels comfortable. His listeners respond with boredom or indifference. Meanwhile, the other members of the group use storying with adults with excellent response.
Will adults listen to stories? In his research, Kendall Haven examined more than a hundred thousand pages of research across fifteen fields. He also collected anecdotal evidence from thousands of educators and businesses. He concluded that everyone loves stories. Not a single piece of evidence contradicted the premise that stories are universally enjoyed.[6] It is true that many of us can learn via abstract propositions presented in lectures, sermons and evangelistic outlines, especially if these methods suit our learning style or if we’ve been educated in Western methodology.[7] However, many people around the world in non-Western and even within Western countries don’t appreciate abstract concepts. They prefer to learn via stories. If we want our hearers to absorb biblical truth, then we need to evangelize and teach in a way they are enthusiastic about. The good news is that storying helps everybody learn, even the highly educated.
Many of our current evangelistic methods assume that listeners already know the biblical stories. That is, we assume they have a background that allows them to understand nonnarrative teaching. If we’re trying to explain that Jesus’ death was a substitution, the point is considerably clearer when listeners have heard the stories of the Old Testament where an animal died in the place of someone: whether Isaac (Gen 22), the Passover lamb (Ex 11–12) or the animal sacrificed on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16). The mere reference to familiar stories allows the details to flood back into hearers’ minds and fill the word “substitution” with meaning.
Don Carson, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, points out that most Western evangelistic methods, which are often exported to the non-Western world, are “subsets of systematic theology”:
By this I mean that they tend to ask atemporal questions, and give atemporal answers. . . . There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this pattern, as long as the people to whom it is presented have already bought into the Judeo-Christian heritage. . . . But if you present these atemporal outlines of the gospel to those who know nothing about the Bible’s plot-line, and who have bought into one form or another of New Age theosophy, how will they hear you? . . . In short, the good news of Jesus Christ is virtually incoherent unless it is securely set into a biblical worldview.[8]
Perhaps fifty years ago in the West, we could have jumped straight to Jesus in our conversations because many adults had been to Sunday school as children. However, these days most people are biblically illiterate. We can’t assume that they’ve heard the stories of Genesis or Exodus. Even if they are familiar with these stories, they’ve probably never heard them linked together in any coherent way. The result is like a puzzle that’s been thrown in the air with the picture on the box discarded. These people have a little piece of yellow, blue or red, but they have no idea what the whole picture is. We haven’t built the necessary foundations so they can understand who Jesus is and why he came.

Storying Opens People to the Gospel

Sometimes storying is the only way people are willing to listen to the gospel. They may have built up defensive walls against other evangelistic methods, had bad experiences in the past, or their own religious leaders have warned them against listening to the Bible. I once met a new Christian while shopping in the market. She told me she’d stopped sharing Jesus with her friends because she was hopeless at it. Whenever her friends saw her coming they began to run away. When she explained her method, it was obvious why her friends were running! The method she was trained to use was confrontational, abstract and manipulative, and it made her friends feel like targets.
I asked this woman if I could demonstrate how I shared with others and launched into the first story. Within a minute, one of the friends she’d alienated came over and asked if she could listen in. At the end of the creation story the friend said, “It’s just like watching television.”
One huge advantage of using stories is simply that the hearer enjoys the story and doesn’t feel threatened by it. My friend James works in a country where it is difficult to share the gospel openly. But he has found that storying is not perceived as evangelism. Recently he’s been able to share the gospel with Buddhist monks in a monastery. These monks listened to a set of nine stories and loved them—a Bible study or more formal means of evangelism most likely would not have received a minute of their attention. It might even have been met with vigorous protest. In contrast, the stories seemed harmless. This “harmless” approach allowed the monks to participate in storying groups, and the first one just became a believer after listening to weeks of stories and asking many questions.
Daniel Sanchez, J. O. Terry and LaNette W. Thompson, experienced missionaries and storytellers in the Philippines, Panama and West Africa, write, “People learn best in a non-threatening situation, because they can be more open to what is being taught. In a threatening situation, much of the hearer’s unconscious energy goes into preparing to defend against the threat. A story presents concepts in a way that hearers do not feel obliged to agree with them. As a result, the new ideas are more likely to be accepted.”[9]
This is one reason that storying is also appreciated by postmodern Westerners. Among many features of postmodern thinking is the idea that all religions are the same and that truth is relative. People often react negatively to presentations of what they perceive as dogmatic truth. However, stories seem to be acceptable style of presentation.[10] Rick Richardson, evangelist and associate professor at Wheaton College, writes,
Stories [are] the only containers big enough to carry truth, because stories convey not just the facts, but also the feelings and nuances of truth. Stories are a bigger and better container for the whole of the truth than propositions, concepts and dogmas. . . . People today tend to distrust logic and truth when it is expressed propositionally and dogmatically. But when our truth is enfleshed in stories, . . . people are interested. . . . We must recover our own stories, and God’s Big Story, and connect them to the stories of people we love and are reaching out to.[11]

Storying Can Be Done with Nonseekers

Many evangelistic methods, such as evangelistic sermons or courses that investigate Christianity, can only be done with people who already want to know more about the Bible or are at least comfortable enough to participate. Storying allows us to share the gospel with hearers who are anti-Christian or haven’t yet considered that Jesus could be relevant to their lives. The difference can be pictured like this:
The long length of chain represents a person’s life. The point at which we come to new life is represented by the cross (sometimes the exact moment is not possible to pinpoint). I show the links to the left as black, representing life before Christ when we walked in darkness and were spiritually dead. The links to the right I show as green, representing our new life and growth in maturity. The links themselves are people or things God uses to bring us closer to himself. These could be a Bible study, an experience of suffering, a friend’s love and concern, the words of a song, a dream—the possibilities are endless because God’s creativity is limitless. Storying allows us to share with people substantially further to the left.[12]
A few months ago, during a three-hour flight, I had the privilege of sharing an entire set of stories with a man originally from Pakistan. Our conversation started with my asking him why he was traveling to our destination. This led him to reciprocate with, “And what about you?” I explained that I told Bible stories, and he said he’d never read any of the Bible. We talked a little about the Qur’an, and then I offered to tell him the first story in the Bible. At the end of each story he said, “What’s next?” I told fourteen story sections in just over an hour. Then I suggested he find a modern version of the Bible so he could read it for himself. I wrote down my suggestions for where he should start. Storying can turn someone like this man into a seeker.
One of the most difficult parts of evangelism is starting a gospel conversation from scratch. My difficulty in this area has largely been overcome since I started storying. When I met the woman in the photo developing shop, it was easy to ask if she would listen to a story. The subsequent visits were also easier because she naturally asked me for the next one in the series. And if someon...

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