God’s Transforming Story: How the Metanarrative of Scripture Can Change Lives

by Suzy Triplett

We all love a good story. In 2012, moviegoers worldwide spent the equivalent of US$62.4 billion at the box office. Something happens when a story is told. Stories move us emotionally and move us into action. There is power in a good story, and in the wake of post-modernism the power of storytelling is needed today like never before. 

We all love a good story. In 2012, moviegoers worldwide spent the equivalent of US$62.4 billion at the box office. Something happens when a story is told. Stories move us emotionally and move us into action. There is power in a good story, and in the wake of post-modernism the power of storytelling is needed today like never before. 

However, the Church has largely moved away from storytelling as a means of spiritual formation. In his book Experiential Storytelling, Mark Miller points out that the Reformation created a dichotomy between faith and creativity, causing Jesus’ ancient principles of storytelling to be exchanged for the preaching of propositional truths (2003, 43).

Yet storytelling and spiritual formation can and need to be interconnected. If spiritual formation is “the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself” (Willard 2002, 22), then storytelling needs to become an integral part of helping people see the life of Jesus become part of their own story. 

This is true for all people, regardless of their age, ethnicity, spiritual maturity, or literacy status. However, it is particularly true as we consider our growing awareness and understanding of oral cultures. In Making Disciples of Oral Learners, it is estimated that over two-thirds of the world’s population is made up of oral communicators (2005, 3). That is 5.7 billion people who can’t, don’t, or won’t read. 

Oral learners are characterized by their reliance upon spoken language and prefer to communicate and receive information through stories, poems, drama, proverbs, and songs (2005, 5). This is in contrast to literate learners who organize information into categories and learn from explanations and expositions. 

Unfortunately, an estimated ninety percent of Christian ministry today occurs through literate styles (2005, 3). These literate styles frequently rely on print. However, even spoken sermons can be literate forms of communication when they are based on outlines or lists of principles. This means that the vast majority of the audience is unable to connect with the gospel message as it is being presented today.

As ambassadors of Christ, the burden to present the message of Christ in a way that is understandable, and therefore formative, to the listener is on us. If our passion to see the nations be blessed is to come to fruition, then we need to reconnect God’s story to ministry. When we do this, we will discover the transforming nature of story.

Openness to the Truth 

“How do you get your people to talk during Bible study? My guys just sit there and listen but won’t answer questions.” This was the dilemma posed to me by a teammate who had been engaged in a disciple-making ministry on the college campuses of Bangkok for nearly five years. He used topical booklets that bounced from one scripture passage to the next. The booklet contained questions on each passage and a space to write your answers. His Thai students probably received this type of instruction the same way they received instruction from their college professors: “You teach, I will listen, and I will never question your instruction.”  

Stories disarm us, allowing the truth to penetrate where
propositional truths may simply be deflected or ignored. 

Meanwhile, across town I was engaged in my second storying project with two Thai non-believers. A young Thai intern named Sprite, who had just begun official ministry discipling high school boys, was by my side to assist. On the first day we discussed the Parable of the Lost Sheep. It was an open and insightful dialogue lasting approximately four hours. No one was silent, except perhaps Sprite. When I asked for his impression of the day, Sprite replied that what these young men needed was a booklet so that we could teach them what it means to be a Christian because “these guys know absolutely nothing.”  

Eight weeks later, we had finished eight parables of Jesus. Each day, we spent hours in dialogue. I asked questions about the story and their lives, and I gave almost no explanations of the scriptures. We finished our study with one new believer and a second young man who identified himself as “eighty percent Christian, twenty percent Buddhist.” Once again, I asked Sprite what he thought of the whole storying process. His response sums up one of the major transforming features of story: “I realized how much story opens up people’s hearts. When I use a booklet, the guys gain a lot of information, but it really doesn’t seem to reach the heart.” 

In discussing how to contextualize the presentation of the gospel in the Thai society, Alan Johnson identifies seven key principles. His first principle is “There must be dialogue” (2002, 25). Story generates dialogue, and dialogue allows for the exploration of the implications of the Christian faith. It opens the imagination of the heart to consider a key question that I always ask near the end of each session: “If this story is true, what would that mean for your life today?” 

Stories also open the heart to receive those difficult things we might normally resist. Nathan the Prophet knew this well. This is why he confronted the king with the bad news of sin through a story (2 Sam. 12). None of us likes to be ‘preached to’ about our sin. This method generally meets with defensiveness, at least initially. Recall that the good news of the gospel is only good if we fully understand the bad news first—namely, that we are deeply sinful. This is a difficult truth. Yet David Benner states, “Turning to God in our sin and shame is at the heart of spiritual formation” (2004, 67). Repentance of sin is impossible if we are resisting the reality of our sin. 

Discovering the Truth 

Stories disarm us, allowing the truth to penetrate where propositional truths may simply be deflected or ignored. However, the flip side is that stories create and utilize ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt. This concerns many of us deeply committed to God’s truth and making God’s truth known. 

What if the gospel is buried so deep in story that it is never clearly expressed? Interestingly, this didn’t concern God, who authored the Bible, seventy-five percent of which is narrative (Steffen 2005, 36). Nor did it concern Jesus, who never spoke to others without a parable (Mark 4:34) in order to reveal the truth to some while concealing it from others (Matt. 13:12-15). God gave us a grand narrative and the Holy Spirit so that we would never grow dispassionate at mining for the transforming nuggets of truths within the story of God.

Uncle Black was an older gentleman in his sixties when he agreed to help me develop a new set of stories on the life of David. He was a very proud Buddhist who, I am convinced, only agreed to help me in order to impress me with how much Buddhism he knew. He held deeply entrenched religious beliefs that were not about to change simply because I gave him new religious propositions to consider. 

This became clear during the second story—the story of God’s magnificent promises to David in 2 Samuel 7. Part of this passage includes reference to the fact that if David’s son sins, then God will discipline him but will also forgive him. As we talked about what this meant, Uncle Black came out with a surprising statement for a Buddhist: “Only God forgives sin.” I was understandably pleased…until we said our goodbyes at the door. Uncle Black joyfully stated, “I am so happy, Buddha has forgiven my sin.” I politely asked him about the apparent discrepancy with his earlier statement and he further explained, “Don’t you know? God and Buddha are the same person.”  

An American intern had been listening in on that conversation and asked me an excellent question: “How do we go about addressing that misunderstanding in this cultural setting?” She assumed that after seven years on the mission field in the Thai Buddhist context, I would have had some success in apologetics. I had no response for her or for Uncle Black, and so we just kept telling stories and waited to see what would happen.

The stories of David’s life continued for the next two months. The boy who had become king and received amazing promises from God fell into grave sin. But there was repentance, followed by forgiveness. And Uncle Black was on the edge of his seat to see if God would keep his promises to David. Who would become the next king of Israel? Would that Temple ever be built? Would the Ark of the Covenant ever have a house?

 The final story arrived and Solomon was anointed king of Israel,
a glorious temple was built, and an entire nation turned out to celebrate
the entrance of the Ark of the Covenant into the Temple of God.

The final story arrived and Solomon was anointed king of Israel, a glorious temple was built, and an entire nation turned out to celebrate the entrance of the Ark of the Covenant into the Temple of God. It was clear by the look on his face that Uncle Black felt satisfied with the conclusion. And then his face turned very serious, and he looked straight into my eyes and said, “Now I know that the God of Israel and Buddha are not the same person, because this God makes promises to his people and keeps them.” 

I could have addressed Uncle Black’s theological error much earlier with the use of rational discourse and direct confrontation. It would not have been convincing. What my intern and I learned on that day was the power of God’s story. It is the greatest story ever and it is meant to be told, not merely explained. 

I have become convinced that if we carefully, yet simply, tell the story of God and get out of the way, then the Holy Spirit will do the rest. Sermons tell us what to think, but stories invite us to do the thinking and discover the truths embedded in the story. When we come to discover truth in God’s story for ourselves, that truth sticks. Our knowledge of God becomes more personal and experiential, opening the door to deeper transformation.

Internalizing the Truth 

True transformation or spiritual formation requires an additional step beyond being open and beyond the understanding and knowledge of God’s truth. Spiritual formation is a matter of the heart and comes when we
encounter Christ, who claimed to be the living truth (John 14:6). True transformation occurs when our discovered truth is internalized and becomes part of the essence of who we are and shapes our words, behaviors, and deepest attitudes to become more like that of Christ.

In the beginning, Uncle Black did not understand why we were telling stories. After the very engaging and shortened version of David and Goliath on the first day, he responded with skepticism, “I don’t know why you have to tell such long stories, all you need to say is God is good and he gives us his Bible to teach us to be good.” 

Two stories later, we sat at lunch with three of his friends, also in the story group, and he asked me if David was going to get married soon. The group bantered that David needed a wife so he could have a son who would become the king and build the Temple of God for the Ark of the Covenant. Uncle Black then continued, “Oh what a glorious wedding David must have had. I wish I could have been there.”  

David had become Uncle Black’s hero and friend. He was deeply invested in David’s life. Uncle Black was a leader in his community of five hundred people. And one day, when I asked the all-important question about how this story, if true, would influence Uncle Black’s life, he responded with the following: “I want to be like David and lead my people well. I want to be humble enough to admit when I am wrong, because if I don’t, then all my community will suffer.”

When we find ourselves in the plotline of God’s story of redemption,
God’s story becomes part of our own and we are transformed.

Pentecostal theologian John Goldingjay (1997, 8), Christian psychologist and spiritual director David Benner (2004, 37-41), and author Stephen Nichols (2011, ch. 6) all agree. One of the key elements of having our lives shaped by the story of God is to set one’s own story alongside it.  Goldingjay notes that the “story-shapedness of Scripture corresponds to the story-shapedness of human experience” (1997, 6). Spiritual formation occurs as our story and God’s story intersect; when our story and the stories of biblical characters meet. When we find ourselves in the plotline of God’s story of redemption, God’s story becomes part of our own and we are transformed.

Two of the markers of spiritual formation commonly found in the literature are encountering God and experiencing personal transformation (Brisben and Klein 2012, 330). A case study with 138 students enrolled in a freshmen-level Old Testament Survey course was carried out at John Brown University. The authors set out to measure whether or not spiritual formation occurs as a result of reading the Old Testament as story. 

As part of the course requirements, students were given structured experiences that included using imaginative techniques to enter the story. At the conclusion of the case study, seventy percent of the students reported experiencing at least one of the vital aspects of the process of spiritual formation. Fifty-five percent reported experiencing both of them (2012, 334).

As this study illustrates, stories are not just for oral learners. As highly literate Western students of God’s word, we can become dangerously overly intellectual as it relates to our faith. As J.I. Packer reminds us, “A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about Him” (1973, 27). To truly know God, we must read the scriptures formationally, not just informationally. This does not mean a person bypasses a logical, analytical approach to God’s word; instead, it does mean that we move beyond it. Stories invite us to do just that.

Telling the Truth

A small house church had been meeting in a slum community in Bangkok for about a year and a half. As church planters, we had done our best to make sure the members of the church had been taught the essentials of the faith. We knew that it wasn’t high theology that these new believers needed; instead, they needed the basics that would serve as the foundation of a lifetime of following Christ. In the past year and a half we had covered the essentials, and even included eight weeks of storying the panorama of God’s promise. We had just finished the very practical Book of James and were wondering where to turn to next. We decided to ask the church members what they were interested in studying. They now had enough understanding of what was in the Bible and could participate more fully in their own development.

Khai was the man we were grooming to take over leadership. I suppose it was fitting that he was the one who quickly responded for the group, “Let’s do stories again. All the other stuff you guys teach is great, but I can’t remember any of it.”  

It is a little disheartening to think that over one year of Bible teaching had been mostly forgotten. Yet it illustrates the point of how telling God’s story, instead of telling about God’s story, can transform not only individual people, but also entire peoples. Here is the key principle that missionaries constantly strive for but don’t always achieve—reproducibility. 

Spiritual formation of the individual soul is not for our sakes alone, but for the glory of God’s name among the nations. We are transformed into the image of Christ for the benefit of participating with him in his mission to reconcile the nations to himself (Ezek. 36:22-38). This undoubtedly involves incarnating the truth of God’s word as a living testimony of the grace of God. However, this demonstration of the truth of God must also be accompanied with the proclamation of the truth of God if others are to know that Jesus is the Son of God. Faith comes by hearing (Rom. 10:17).

You cannot reproduce what you cannot remember. Our emerging church leader, Khai, was never going to be able to make disciples of others through the proclamation of propositional truths if he couldn’t recall those truths. No matter how clear and eloquent those teachings might have been, if they were not deeply implanted in Khai’s heart to take root and flourish, they would prove to be ineffective tools as he preached them to others. 

In contrast, stories had the potential to make him into a disciple-maker. What had been hidden in his heart, what his mind could easily recall, what had begun to shape his own soul—this is what he would reproduce in his ministry with others. 

As I crafted sets of Bible stories and audio-recorded them in the common vernacular, those stories were checked and double-checked for biblical accuracy. They were also checked for reproducibility. The almost-finished product was told to someone who had never heard it before. The story was retold as many times as the person wanted to hear it. And then that person was asked to repeat it. I will never forget sitting and listening to Oui, a 16-year-old Buddhist girl with a sixth-grade education, repeat the four-minute story of the prodigal son almost word for word after hearing it only twice. James Slack notes that most oral communicators are able to remember and repeat with accuracy a story after hearing it told only three times (2006, 3).

Conclusion

Story opens our hearts. It leads us to truth without hand-feeding it to us. Story forms us as it invites us to participate in God’s mystery. When we engage with God’s word as story, we frequently find that we have more questions at the conclusion of our study than we did at the beginning. But we have encountered God, the author of the great story and the author of ours. Our knowledge of God becomes personal and relational. According to David Benner, this is the only kind of knowledge that transforms (2004, 25).

References

Benner, David. 2004. The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press. 

Brisben, David and Amelia Klein. 2012. “Reading the Old Testament as Story: A Pedagogy for Spiritual Formation.” Christian Education Journal 9: 326-341. 

Goldingjay, John. 1997. “Biblical Story and the Way it Shapes our Story.” The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 27:5-15.

Johnson, Alan R. 2002. “Wrapping the Good News for the Thai.” A paper delivered at Southwest Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Missiological Society, Pasadena, Calif.

Lieberman, David. 2013. “Worldwide Consumers Spent $62.4B On Movies In 2012, Up 2.1%.” Deadline/Hollywood. January 21. Accessed March 10, 2016, from http://deadline.com/2013/01/worldwide-consumer-spending-movies-409050. 

Making Disciples of Oral Learners. 2005. Lausanne Occasional Paper, no. 54. Bangalore: Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization and International Orality Network.

Miller, Mark. 2003. Experiential Storytelling: (Re)Discovering Narrative to Communicate God’s Message. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Nichols, Stephen J. 2011. Welcome to the Story: Reading, Loving, and Living God’s Word. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books. 

Packer, J.I. 1973. Knowing God. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

Slack, James B. 2006. “The Memory and Recall of Stories by Oral Communicators in the Context of Chronological Bible Storying.” Reaching and Teaching. August 8. Accessed March 10, 2016, from http://reachingandteaching.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2014/06/MemoryandRecall.pdf. 

Steffen, Tom A. 2005. Reconnecting God’s Story to Ministry: Cross-cultural Storytelling at Home and Abroad. Waynesboro, Ga.: Authentic Media. 

Willard, Dallas. 2002. Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Navpress.

. . . . 

Suzy Triplett serves as a missionary in Bangkok, Thailand, with Servant Partners. A graduate of CIU Seminary and Graduate School of Ministry, she focuses on reproducible models of discipleship with the urban poor.

EMQ, Vol. 52, No. 3 pp. 308-316. Copyright  © 2016 Billy Graham Center for Evangelism.  All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMQ editors.

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