Rethinking How We Teach: The Importance of Story

Over the last 14 months I have been working with middle and high school students on a weekly basis--teaching them, discipling them, trying to cut loose and have fun again. (It's amazing how a steady diet of academics can really turn you into an old man at heart!) For the first nine months, I had a curriculum that was topical and teen-centric, but I discovered that my youth were having trouble putting it all together (or remembering what we talked about for that matter).

The difficulties I find with teaching an unending stream of topics--regardless of whether or not they are "relevant"--is that we, in the church, often fail to lay a good foundation of meta-narrative, the over-arching story of scripture. It's like pulling a bunch of lines and scenes from a movie in random order when you've never watched the whole movie. Pieces and parts are very important, but when we loose the forest for the trees we giving people "twelve baskets of fragments." Information in and of itself is rarely inspiring. Stories are inspiring.

As a guy with a BA in English, I am well acquainted with story. I love stories. I try to read 15-20 fiction books a year. When I get tired of reading, I watch TV (I know, I know! Not very intellectual, but I can't get enough of my favorite characters). The Bible is chocked full of stories. The great stories of the OT, such as creation, Noah's flood, the tower of Babel, Abraham, Joseph, the exodus from Egypt, Joshua leading Israel into the promise land, etc. etc. The synoptic gospels are jam-packed with stories of healings and miracles and conflict with the religious leaders. Plus, Jesus loves answering questions with parables. In his excellent but highly academic book, The Faith of Jesus Christ: the Narrative Sub-structure of Galatians 3:1-4:11, Dr. Richard B. Hays and Scot McKnight in his less dense book, The King Jesus Gospel, have made a strong cases for "the Gospel" at basic level simply being the story of Jesus and the cross--even when someone like Paul seems to be writing a totally different type of material all together. When the gospel is referenced in most of the NT, it points back to basic plot points of a narrative...and narrative equals story.

God is clearly not afraid of stories. But stories can be messy. Story can be vague or unclear in what they ask us to do. Stories can require us to think creatively, so we skip story and Biblical narrative and meta-narrative and give people information dumps followed by three imperatives for the Christian life. Next week, when we ask what we learned about last week, we are greeted with crickets. We tried to inspire people with information, but information does not equal transformation. Transformation occurs when our minds are changed by the Holy Spirit through the Word. Transformation happens when our old sinful and fallen scripts for seeing the world and ourselves are called into question and replaced with a new narrative--a narrative of the cross.

Recently, I have been on a mission to discover how to better communicate with teens, or adults for that matter, by capturing their imaginations and inspiring them to grow in their knowledge of God and the scriptures. Many weeks I fail. Oftentimes I slide back into delivering content devoid of story. I tell myself that building a theological framework isn't sexy but it is necessary. Teaching people a difficult concept such as the Trinity is vital. Teaching them that Christianity is grounded in a historical reality is imperative. Teaching them that God has called His Church to be One as He is One is critical for developing disciples that will cross party lines to work together, "so that the world may believe" that the Father has sent Jesus to be the Savior of the world. I do believe this; however, I don't want theology to become the replacement "topic" to topical lessons and sermons. I want to capture people's imaginations for Christ.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, and any stories you might share about your experiences in teaching and preaching. Have you found ways to teach theological lessons that inspire and spark imagination in your audience? Please share these with us in the comments below.