Experiential Storytelling 2

I just finished Mark Miller's book, Experiential Storytelling.  I already gave one post on this book when I was part way through.  Now, let me give a few quotes from the rest of the book, and then at the end I will comment briefly on my take.

On reimagining the sermon...

Why not take a breather for a time and let the story speak for itself in a language those gathered can understand?  When presented without all of the trappings of exegetical interpretation, the biblical text is freed from the limits of our minds and is open to the organic beauty of the infinite word. (p. 87)

Benjamin Franklin quote...

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. (p. 94)

On the elements of experiential storytelling...

Remember to let your audience think for themselves.  Do not make everything obvious by spelling out every detail for them.  This is where you are going to have to trust that your audience members have imaginative abilities and a built-in mechanism that allows them to think for themselves. (p. 112)

My take...

I expected more.  It was a fast read, with not a great deal of content.  The book did spark some interesting questions in my head and I learned a few things along the way, but by the end I felt like it never took me where I needed to go.  It never got me into "aha!" stuff.  It never solidified anything I was already thinking. 

It's possible the issue is partially with me, but the book is explained as a book about "rediscovering narrative," and I didn't read it that way.  I felt the point the book ultimately made was to emphasize "sensory" stories over "verbal" stories.  Verbal has a role for Miller, but for this book at least it's a diminished one.

I think a couple of quotes show that emphasis.

Studies have shown that only about 10 to 15 percent of what we "hear" comes in the form of spoken words.  God has designed us to experience the world around us in all of its fullness, so most of our learning is nonverbal. (p. 103)

It is crucial that you do not interpret the experience for them.  The whole point is the experience does the talking. (p. 113)

I think the book serves better as a tool for helping a handful of youth leaders supplement their normal communication of the truth with creative experiences.  Because of the work it would entail, these youth leaders would probably need to be in large churches with lots of youth and a sizable budget.  So there is a place for this book, but I'm not just so sure that place is on the bookshelf of the typical missional pastor.

Experiential Storytelling

While perusing through my local Borders Bookstore on Sunday evening, I ran across and purchased a book I heard about but haven't seen:  Experiential Storytelling: (Re)Discovering Narrative to Communicate God's Message by Mark Miller.

I read through about a third of the book last night.  I find it intriguing and compelling as well as scandalous and disturbing all at the same time.  Some, just by the title alone, will judge the book as postmodernism's destructive work in the church.  Others will think these ideas are the key to speaking to a world changed by postmodernism.  I want to deliver some quotes for discussion here. 

Miller defines "experiential storytelling"...

- creating an environment that allows others to participate in the telling of a story through sensory interaction (p. 7)

On Experience...

What if we were to take our message and begin speaking the language of the natives?  Instead of telling people Jesus is the light of the world, what if we showed them the stark difference between light and darkness?

What if we removed all of the argumentative language, replaced it with beautiful narratives, and let people feel the power of the story?  Instead of trying to convince people to accept a list of spiritual laws, how about placing individuals in the story, allowing them to learn and interact with God's character? (p. 26)

A Jewish Teaching Story...

Truth, naked and cold, had been turned away from every door in the village.  Her nakedness frightened the people.  When Parable found her, she was huddled in a corner, shivering and hungry.  Taking pity on her, Parable gathered her up and took her home.  There, she dressed Truth in story, warmed her and sent her out again.  Clothed in story, Truth knocked again at the villagers' doors and was readily welcomed into the people's houses.  They invited her to eat at their table and warm herself by their fire. (p. 29)

On Story...

Stories address us on every level.  They speak to the mind, the body, the emotions, the spirit, and the will.  In a story a person can identify with situations he or she has never been in.  The individual's imagination is unlocked to dream what was previously unimaginable. (p. 33)

Quoting Annette Simmons...

Stories are "more true" than facts because stories are multi-dimensional.  Truth with a capital "T" has many layers.  Truths like justice or integrity are too complex to be expressed in a law, a statistic, or a fact.  Facts need the context of when, who, and where to become Truths. (p. 36)

Sermon vs. Story...

A sermon tells people what to think.  A story forces people to do the thinking for themselves.  It can feel dangerous because it allows for interpretation.  But on of the adjectives used to describe the Holy Spirit is "counselor."  Do we trust our people and the Holy Spirit enough to allow them to think for themselves?  Can we leave something open-ended, knowing the conclusion might not come until later that day, week, month, or year?  Can we allows people to own the stories?  Or do we do all of the interpreting and leave nothing to the imagination?

My believe is that when a story becomes personal and people begin to become unsettled and challenged by it, then they have been touched in a place where facts fear to tread.  It is a place so personal that it can spark and inner transformation. (p. 41)

Quoting Dieter Zander...

When you put your face next to an "A" string and begin to hum and "A"--that string will begin to vibrate.  The "D" won't, the "G" won't, but the "A" will.  Because it was created to vibrate with that tone.  The thing about the story--God's story--is that when it is told and applied well, and when it is supported in a sensorial way, something inside our heart starts to vibrate, regardless of whether we are a Christian or not, because we were created for our hearts to vibrate with that story. (pp. 42-43)

Buy it at Amazon.  Also, read my follow-up post on this book along with my take after finishing it.

Missional Ecclesiology

"There is particular urgency today for a missional ecclesiology to reclaim the profoundly eschatological character of the church's calling.  The theological reductionism of both gospel and church has been accompanied, over the centuries, by a great loss of that future tense of faith that should powerfully shape our present life and action.  In place of fruitless speculation about events that have not yet happened, we must focus on the certainty of our hope that enables us now to witness to Christ fearlessly and point away from ourselves modestly.  A missional ecclesiology will always be candid about its penultimate nature; the continuing conversion of the church will necessitate obedient and serendipitous re-visiting of all our theological formulae and propositions.  This does not mean that the gospel is not sufficient to the task; it means that the church lives with the open confession that its grasp of and response to the gospel is always partial, that there is yet more healing to be done, more conversion to submit to, more wonder to worship."

Darrell Guder, "The Church as Missional Community" in The Community of the Word, page 127.

Getting God Right

"There are two essential problems with believing God is somebody He isn't.  The first problem is that it wrecks your life, and the second is that it makes God look like an idiot."

Don Miller in Searching for God Knows What, page 21.

Trinity and the Personal

"Trinity understands God as three-personed: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God in community, each 'person' in active communion with the others.  We are given an understanding of God that is most emphatically personal and interpersonal.  God is nothing if not personal.  If God is revealed as personal, the only way that God can be known is in personal response.  We need to know this.  It is the easiest thing in the world to use words as a kind of abstract truth or principle, to deal with the gospel as information.  Trinity prevents us from doing this.  We can never get away with depersonalizing the gospel or the truth to make it easier, simpler, more convenient.  Knowing God through impersonal abstractions is ruled out, knowing God through programmatic projects is abandoned, knowing God in solitary isolation is forbidden.  Trinity insists that God is not an idea or a force or a private experience but personal and known only in personal response and engagement."

Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, pages 45-46.

Bible Exposition

I'm almost finished with Brian McLaren's book, The Church on the Other Side.  I don't like everything inside, and I would only recommend it thoughtfully.  But I have tried to pull out quotes here and there that I thought properly challenged current church practice and thought.  Here's another one of those.

    What did our churches become in modernity but places of Bible exposition (aka objective textual analysis)?  What was the ticket to spiritual leadership if not Bible scholarship (that is, credentials certifying our competence at applying modern analytical tools to Bible study)?  If our churches leaned to the liberal side, we tended to reduce the Bible to nothing but myths, and if they leaned to the conservative, we tended to reduce it to nothing but propositions, principles, abstractions, doctrines.

    Can you see how for maybe four hundred years this could remain interesting and engaging, but after five hundred, our culture would be ready for a new approach...something less reductionistic, something more holistic and maybe even mysterious?

(Pages 193-194.)

I would love to hear some reaction to this, especially from people who are like me who think that expositional preaching is the heart of all good preaching (whether narrative, doctrinal, etc).

Stories as Hospitality

"Story is the most natural way of enlarging and deepening our sense of reality, and then enlisting us as participants in it.  Stories open doors to areas or aspects of life that we didn't know were there, or had quit noticing out of over-familiarity, or supposed were out-of-bounds for us.  They then welcome us in.  Stories are verbal acts of hospitality."

Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, page 13.

Spiritual Theology

For the most part, I'm putting aside the other books I'm reading to dive into Eugene Peterson's new book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology.  I plan to blog on it all the way through.

A recommendation from Marva Dawn...

"There is no pastor in the world that I trust more than Eugene Peterson, and this book offers us Eugene at his best -- poet, storyteller, wonderer, biblical scholar, sage, practiced disciple, and lover of God.  He woos us into exquisitely perceptive Bible readings, diagnoses the dangers of our common shortcuts, and immerses us in the community of those who live the truth of the Trinity in Jesus' way.  This is a life-transforming and liberating book.  I pray that many people will give it thoughtful, reverent attention."

New Theology

"To say that the church on the other side needs a new theology is not to suggest heresy.  It is simply to distinguish between the message (God's truth, revelation, action, and expression) and theology (our task, our work, our language, our search to understand and articulate God's message).  In the old church we too often forgot that the two are different....In the new church we will try harder to remember that God is God and we are mere creatures, and that our attempts to understand and articulate his message and truth are always approximations."

Brian McLaren in The Church on the Other Side, page 65.

Thinking Differently About God

"In my life, God is always changing the way I think of Him.  I am not saying God Himself is changing, or that my theology is open and I blur the lines on truth; I am only saying I think I know who He is, then I figure out I don't know very much at all....And that's one of the things you notice about Jesus in the Gospels, that He is always going around saying, You have heard it said such and such, but I tell you some other thing.  If you happened to be a person who thought they knew everything about God, Jesus would have been completely annoying."

Don Miller in Searching for God Know What, page 21.

Friendly or Friendship?

    "Closed friendships are upsetting initially because they do not offer friendliness to outsiders, but open friendships are far more disruptive because they invite outsiders in.  Life at work, in the neighborhood, at home, in the schoolyard, or among our best companions and allies might go on smoothly and in a friendly way without the intrusion of friendships.  Friendliness is safe and stable, and therefore more common and acceptable than captivating friendships.  Lively friendships form when two or three in the neighborhood or workplace start thinking and seeing things together.  They start talking and become captivated by an idea or vision of what they can do and where they can go together.  They will begin to form a place in the world together that is deeper and richer than it is when each goes about his or her business alone.
    Friends start to do more than just spend time or cooperate at work.  They start to live, struggle, and move forward side by side with the same way of envisioning the future.  Friends conspire.  They plan.  They want to make a difference.  They seek a goal that is beyond each and attainable only together.  Together, they are able to imagine a different kind of world, and together they are able to act in it.  Such friendship can be closed in upon itself or open to any who are captivated by the same journey.  Friendship brings either withdrawal or an offer that will change us.  When friendship brings an offer of hospitality, it is an intrusion upon our safe and smooth-running world."

David Matzko McCarthy in The Good Life, pages 36-37.

Raw Materials

    "This is the church as we have too often practiced it in the modern era.  The world exists as a source of raw materials for the church.  It's okay to tear people out of their neighborhoods as long as we get them into the church more.  It's okay to devalue their 'secular' jobs as long as we get them involved in church work more.  It's okay to withdraw all our energies from the arts and culture 'out there' as long as we have a good choir and nice sanctuary 'in here.'  It's okay because, after all, we're about salvaging individuals from a sinking ship; neighborhoods, economies, cultures, and all but individual human souls will sink, so who cares?  In this way of thinking, we could build more Christians, better Christians, and dynamic Christian communities ... at the expense of the world, not for its good.
    As we enter the postmodern world, we have to ask ourselves some tough questions: Is the world a mountain to be clear-cut and strip-mined for the benefit of the church?  Or is the church a catalyst of blessing for the good of the world?"

Brian McLaren in The Church on the Other Side, page 37.

Revolutionaries

    "The church today should be getting ready and talking about issues of tomorrow and not issues of 20 and 30 years ago, because the church is going to be squeezed in a wringer.  If we found it tough in these last few years, what are we going to do when we are faced with the real changes that are ahead?...
    One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative.  Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary.  To be conservative today is to miss the whole point, for conservatism means standing in the flow of the status quo, and the status quo no longer belongs to us...
    If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo."

Francis Schaeffer in 1970 as quoted in The Church on the Other Side by Brian McLaren, page 16.

Being Me

"Everybody wants to be fancy and new.  Nobody wants to be themselves.  I mean, maybe people want to be themselves, but they want to be different, with different clothes or shorter hair or less fat.  It's a fact.  If there was a guy who just liked being himself and didn't want to be anybody else, that guy would be the most different guy in the world and everybody would want to be him."

Don Miller in Blue Like Jazz, page 29.

If you haven't figured it out yet, this is a very good book.  Read it.

Addicted to Me

"The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me....I hear addicts talk about the shakes and panic attacks and the highs and lows of resisting their habit, and to some degree I understand them because I have had habits of my own, but no drug is so powerful as the drug of self.  No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play.  There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction."

Don Miller in Blue Like Jazz, page 182.

It might be good for the American Church to repeat this as a weekly mantra for a year and see if we actually start to get it.

Passionate About Nothing

"I don't think any church has ever been relevant to culture, to the human struggle, unless it believed in Jesus and the power of His gospel.  If the supposed new church believes in trendy music and cool Web pages, then it is not relevant to culture either.  It is just another tool of Satan to get people to be passionate about nothing."

Don Miller in Blue Like Jazz, page 111.

Jesus and Palm Reading

    "The goofy thing about Christian faith is that you believe it and don't believe it at the same time.  It isn't unlike having an imaginary friend.  I believe in Jesus; I believe He is the Son of God, but every time I sit down to explain this to somebody I feel like a palm reader, like somebody who works at a circus or a kid who is always making things up or somebody at a Star Trek convention who hasn't figured out the show isn't real.
    Until.
    When one of my friends becomes a Christian, which happens about every ten years because I am such a sheep about sharing my faith, the experience is euphoric.  I see in their eyes the trueness of the story."

Don Miller in Blue Like Jazz, page 51.

I can't tell you how many times in this book (a little more than halfway right now) I have read some experience Miller has and said, "He's just like me!"   I think Miller is right, all the evidence in the world for the truth of the Bible feels meaningless in comparison to seeing the life-change Jesus brings to someone.  Maybe if we saw that more, we would stop being so picky about our commitment to Christ.