A storyteller’s definition of Christianity

I’ve been keeping tabs on Ben Arment’s STORY project for a while, and his conference is happening right now. So in my Twitter-verse, I’ve been seeing constant updates about it. Our current worship series at Concordia is “Stories of the Saints”, where we are using the stories of the people of Scripture as a launching pad into the great story of Scripture – that of Jesus.

So I’ve been surrounded lately with the powerful concept of story, and the now-clichéd phrase that the church possesses “the greatest story ever told”. Like all clichés, it is one because it’s true.Yet the Gospel of Jesus is not a Aesop-ian fable with a moral at the end; it is a true story with the perfect restoration of all things at the end.

This morning I watched a couple video clips of comedians telling stories, and they’re funny because the stories illustrate the ridiculousness of the truth sometimes. (In case you’re wondering, the two clips were Brian Regan’s “Me Monster” and Mark Gungor’s  “Tale of Two Brains” – ok, technically Gungor’s wasn’t a story, but it had a good narrative feel.)

Mix into that some study and reflectio on church leadership, and my brain is full thinking about how we engage people with this: telling God’s story – the Gospel of Jesus – and people’s stories, and helping people to understand how they are related.

One of the best summaries I know is a statement by my friend Matt Ziprick – a pastor in Edmonton, AB – at a youth gathering a few years ago: that Christianity is “where God’s story meets your story”. It’s the heart of faith, that a person who believes that Jesus did what He did “for you” is one who has true faith in Jesus.

And it’s a great way to use the concept of story to learn more about how Jesus really does re-write our stories.