My friend Michael has been working on a project that seeks "to recapture this sacred art of biblical storytelling, inspiring new generations to find themselves in God's Story." (Check out his site: Echo the Story)In his words:
We use a process called Storying (short for Chronological Bible Storying) - a sequential telling of Bible stories followed by a time of review and dialogue. Derived from the ancient Hebrew way of learning, Storying was rediscovered a few decades ago by missionaries who are now using this method extensively around the world. Recently, storying is also proving to be effective with youth and adults in our media-literate, story-oriented North American context.
The purpose of Storying is to create an environment for us to connect with God through His Story.
A few years ago I had the opportunity to train at a youth conference with Michael and we used his storying process and a Biblical story set that he had written. It really brought a lot of things together in my understanding of the Bible and ministry. I grew up on sonlife strategy, but when I looked at its basis as a mature adult, I could not find just one "strategy" in Jesus life that was also meant to be the instruction book for us to follow "religiously" today. Jesus basically said rely on the Holy Spirit and live like me in total dependence on the Father. Finding a 3.5 year replicable strategy in his life does not seem to be the point.
Having grown up with this as an assumption, I began struggling to find a framework through which to understand ministry. There were lots of things that helped me to find a proper framework, but the idea of the "Story of God" has been the main piece that reconstructed my deconstructed faith.
As I worked with Michael and saw the amazing way in which this process formed Christ in students. As a middle school Pastor I was inspired by Michael's vision and have started working my way through the bible and writing my own story set. Mine are not as good as the ECHO ones... but the process has been priceless for me, and now the story of God is the framework that helps me think through my ministry every day.
The Echo stories are available from Michael's website here:
