Pig Headed Bible Story Tellers Needed

There's something pig headed about Bible storytelling that I find myself drawn to.

It's the fact that despite the claims of the world's "other stories" (the trendy word for it these days is "metanarrative" or a while back "worldview"), we insist on telling God's story in and through the many episodes of God's mighty acts in history that find their climax in Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and coming again in His glory and revealed in Holy Scripture.

To borrow a phrase from Lesslie Newbigin - the Bible is "Public Truth" as opposed to private fancy.

There's just one problem, it needs to be "public" again.

People even in the "Bible Belt" dismiss the Bible because they have been offered a caricature of it's message through the machinations of preachers who use the Bible as a disguise for their own message.

First let's let the Bible Stories speak for themselves. Then let's speak from the Bible Stories so the Bible can be made "public" again.

This will take a certain amount of pig-headedness.

*A dogged seeking of opportunities to tell the Story of Christ in the stories of the Bible. (I'll be posting about story telling goals at some point.)

*A persistent refusal to change the message of the Bible and to present it's whole message while always keeping the Climax (Jesus Christ) foremost. That itself takes persistence in learning the stories and telling them. If you follow the outline of DeGraaf's work, you'd be telling a different Bible Story for 273 consecutive weeks!

(Note: when missionaries in cultures without a written Bible, train workers, they usually focus on their learning 125 key Bible Stories. A simple presentation of the Gospel can be done in one 45 minute Bible Story. In planting new churches, H. Jackson Day used a series of one story per week for 4 to 6 months, i.e. 16 - 26 stories. Don't let the number 273 frighten you!)

*A constant building up of the church so that each Christian finds their place in God's story as a servant of Christ as the dominant "story" of their life. People only find their place in God's Story when the first learn it in its own right, have it shape their own view of life, and then live out God's story.

I found this quote helpful in realizing these things.

May God make us gracious but pig headed Bible Story Tellers.

The Gospel is an account of things which have happened. It is about events in the public life of the world, about what happened 'under Pontius Pilate'. It is about 'what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon and our hands have handled' (I John. 1:1). It is about how 'Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and was buried and that he was raised again on the third day according to the Scriptures' (I Corinthians 15:3). It is about 'the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me' (Galatians 2:20). The Gospel is an account of facts, of things which have happened and which therefore cannot be changed. What has been done has been done...

In that multi-religious society it must have been very hard [for the early church] to resist the arguments of those who would say 'Of course we can respect your beliefs, but - after all - yours is only one among many beliefs, and Jesus is only one name among many'. The only answer to this is to tell and tell again the story of what God has actually done. It is always possible,of course, to disbelieve. But if the story is true, if almighty God has really done what the Gospel affirms that he has done, then there is nothing in all the religious ideas and practices of the world that can be put into the same category as this. In all these pastoral letters, therefore, the writers remind their readers of what God has done in Jesus Christ and call for total faithfulness to him.

Lesslie Newbigin
"Pastoral Ministry in a Pluralist Society"
Newbigin.net