We Have a Story to Tell
Many of us grew up in a culture with a “big story” that is, a narrative with sequential events that made sense, hung together with coherence and lead to what in the end could be seen as an inevitable conclusion. That “big story” was of course, the biblical narrative of God’s loving work in the world from its creation to its corruption and redemption and finally to its future happy ending. It is a story that all our other stories can “hang” on and it is a story that gives meaning, purpose, and hope to each of our own stories.
Well I don’t need to tell you that our culture abandoned that story decades ago and it is not likely to be recovered in any meaningful way during the lifetime of anyone now living. Consequently, our culture manifests confusion, increasing frustration, cynicism, and hopelessness.
What’s a church to do?
Our Bishop has commended to us an article written in 1993 titled “How the World Lost Its Story”. Its author, Robert W. Jensen suggests this is not a new situation for the church, that the church has often carried out her mission in somebody’s post-Hellenistic, post-Roman-Imperial, post something world. The key is for the church to be a community that has a story and can tell that story to her own members and others in ways that bring sense to their own lives.
He further suggests that this happens primarily in our worship. It is essential that our worship spaces, our words and music, our art and action, all must work together to give us imagination to engage the story Scripture tells about a particular God, who is the author of a particular reality, that the “big story” presents as the truth.
In the future we’ll be thinking and talking about how our worship can more effectively tell the story of what is to become of us.
What does the Lord have in store for us?
Well I don’t need to tell you that our culture abandoned that story decades ago and it is not likely to be recovered in any meaningful way during the lifetime of anyone now living. Consequently, our culture manifests confusion, increasing frustration, cynicism, and hopelessness.
What’s a church to do?
Our Bishop has commended to us an article written in 1993 titled “How the World Lost Its Story”. Its author, Robert W. Jensen suggests this is not a new situation for the church, that the church has often carried out her mission in somebody’s post-Hellenistic, post-Roman-Imperial, post something world. The key is for the church to be a community that has a story and can tell that story to her own members and others in ways that bring sense to their own lives.
He further suggests that this happens primarily in our worship. It is essential that our worship spaces, our words and music, our art and action, all must work together to give us imagination to engage the story Scripture tells about a particular God, who is the author of a particular reality, that the “big story” presents as the truth.
In the future we’ll be thinking and talking about how our worship can more effectively tell the story of what is to become of us.
What does the Lord have in store for us?
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