Story Time

Stories have always been an important part of my life. Stories, good stories, have a way of capturing and keeping my attention like nothing else. If you think about it, most of our everyday conversations are simply us telling stories to each other. Growing up my parents always told me stories, mostly funny and some sad. I have fond childhood memories of sitting on the front porch of my Grandmother’s house with all the adults as everyone rocked, drank coffee, and told one story after another. {My Dad was usually in the middle of most of them!} Most of these stories were very comical and usually started with the phrase “Remember the time…”. I pickup on this so much that in high school I can remember a guy making fun of me and point me out as, “the guy who always has a story to tell.”

Unfortunately time and adulthood has a way of killing this child like enjoyment of storytelling. However; several things converged last week in my mind that has given me a greater understand and appreciation for stories: personal stories of experience, stories of history, and faith stories found in the Bible.

One thing that I’ve notice of late is how much my girls loving hearing me tell personal stories about when I was a child. They seem to love the ones where I do something goofy at school and all the other kids laugh at me {I guess that helps them feel better?} The next thing that I’ve noticed is how much they can recall from the stories that they cover in school. The resource The Story of the World has been our history text for this first semester and the kids love it and retain so much of it because of the story format. History after is not simply about facts, it is man’s “story”. Finally, I understood more fully the importance of God Story in the Bible by listening to Daniel Taylor’s sermon entitled “The Life Shaping Power of Story: God’s Story and Ours“. I took so many notes from this message, which I’m proving some of those (below) for your benefit. May God bless you as you fulfill you role in the Greatest Story Ever Told.

•  The Bible doesn’t just contain stories. Stories are the means God uses to reveal himself to us and how to be in right relationship with Him.
• Stories also allow for the preservation of the messages through generations. Just like the nation of Israel we tend to fail to remember the stories of God. Knowing God’s stories of the past is the key to understanding both the present and the future.
•  Stories remind us who we are and where we came from.
• Stories are the best way to instruct the next generation. If we fail to tell the stories they will die.
• Stories are the best way the brain and process/ packages and stores the data. We both understand the world and remember our experiences through the stories.
• Sin is wanting a different story than the one God has scripted for you.
• Stories have the power to change us. The great stories will not let us stay the same. The greatest story of the Gospel demands that we become something other than we are.
•  Stories teach us our lines for life.
•  Deprive Children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words. (Alister McIntyre)
  

Wayne and the Arc

Yesterday I was fascinated to read about how story arcs in TV shows like LOST (my personal favorite), ER, and Allis have made them some of the most popular in our day. (I finally know what to call it when they jump all around during an episode.) So here’s an arc to a blog I posted in August about a trip we took Atlanta. While there I took a training class on how to facilitate meetings. My instructor for the week was a guy by the name of Wayne Pendell. So I’m thinking after the class I’ll never see this dude again. Well Wayne found my original post that I wrote and sends me an email thanking me for my kind words and sharing with me the fact that he is a Christian as well. Then he drops the bomb: I’ve cut and pasted a portion of his email below.

“I am making a radical shift this January. We are in the process of selling our house, going to buy an RV, homeschool our three kids, and travel the country. Why? The Lord has asked me to share my testimony with as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. So — we’re taking a HUGE leap of faith and starting out on this new adventure. I’ll still be teaching periodically at Lead Strategies as a partial source of income. With that in mind, I am in the process of trying to schedule places for me to share my testimony at (churches, men’s retreats, etc.) I’d be honored to share at your church sometime or if you know of other churches that’d be great to pass along to me.”

Needless to say I was fired up to hear this from Wayne. Since the email above Wayne has posted a portion of his testimony on YouTube (See below). So to all my church buddies out there, I’ll be contacting you to make room for Wayne; He is the real deal.