The Better Story

by | September 14, 2011

When I was eleven, my best friend and I had a weakness for tween romance novels. So, we decided to write our own, naming our main character “Chrystal.” My friend would take home the composition book one night and write a chapter then I’d take it the next to add my chapter. But it was finished after only three chapters. Because it went like this:

Chapter One: Chrystal starts at a new school
Chapter Two: Chrystal sees a boy across the classroom and hopes he likes her
Chapter Three: Boy expresses his love for Chrystal
The End

We didn’t have time for conflict or suspense. The only thing we cared about was the kiss i.e. resolution. It was the worst story ever written.

Which brings to mind one of the best stories I’ve ever read, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. Early in the story, the claim is made that this story will make you believe in God. Quite a tall order! (As the narrator, himself, admits.) Without giving away how the author attempts this, the following excerpt gives some insight into the author’s appreciation of the connection between God and story:

I can well imagine an atheist’s last words: ‘White, white! L-L-Love! My God!”–and his deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, “Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,” and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story. p.64

As Life of Pi and many other great books have shown me, story has the power to help the reader experience God and, as such, can inform our theology. In conversations with my academic friends, when we’re sharing about important books which have shaped our faith and theology, I’m often surprised by how many of mine are stories.

Here are a few which have been life-changing:

A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
The Princess and The Goblin and The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Silence by Shusaku Endo (scheduled to be released as a major film by Martin Scorcese in 2013)

Read excerpts from these or books from this list at a worship event, or invite a few individuals to share a spiritual kind of book review (i.e. ask them to share how the book helped them see God in a new way).

Consider the bible’s overarching story (Creation, Fall, Redemption, The Church) and invite responses to it by asking questions like:

  • Why, if God knew that we would turn away, were humans created in the first place?
  • Why did God wait thousands of years between that moment of Fall and the fulfillment of the promise through Jesus to restore us?
  • And why, once we’d been restored to God through Jesus, did God decide to keep the world going for thousands more years?

Experience stories from the bible as the characters lived them: without knowing the resolution. Be Joseph in prison without knowing he would one day become second-in-command over the kingdom. Be Abraham at the altar with his son before he saw the ram in the bushes. Because that’s how we experience our own stories – they’re incomplete.

Invite worshipers to write a story of how God has worked in their own lives in the way bible stories are often told.

How can you view the whole service/worship event as a narrative? Consider elements of a story like setting, characters, sequence, exposition, conflict, climax and resolution to create your story-event.

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What is the very first significant story you recall hearing?

by | September 12, 2011

When I was three years old, the book called Boy, Was I Mad by Kathryn Hitte was six years old. I remember my father reading me the story of a young boy who is so mad – exactly why, we are never told – he runs away from home. While away, the boy encounters a variety of interesting experiences: watching a construction site, driving the local junk man’s horse-buggy, observing a swarm of ants dragging a dead bug, taking the bus with his friend to the park to play cowboys and “indians” (yes, this book was written a while ago).

The little boy is drawn into the each experience by curiosity, but then finds himself conflicted, as he remembers he is still so “mad.” How could he enjoy himself if he is supposed to be so sore? At each reminder of his anger, the boy returns to sulking, until he is distracted by something fun again. As the sun begins to set and the moon appears in the still bright sky, the distracted boy accidentally finds himself back at home. Home is not the place he wants to be. Until, that is, he smells the hot food and sees his mother and hears her loving voice and feels the comfort of his own bed.

I now read this story to my three year old son. He enjoys it. He understands “mad” to some degree. I’m not sure he would ever consider “running away from home.” But, he loves the illustrations by Mercer Mayer as much as I did. And, Hitte’s prose, though not rhyming, rolls off the tongue with a pleasantness I have only recognized in one, possibly two other children’s books I’ve read. I think he recognizes it to, to some degree.

This was a significant story for me, as evidenced even in the simple fact that I have chosen to read it to my own son 37 years after having heard it myself.

This week on Clayfire Curator, we consider stories, especially as they are used in worship. Significant stories – stories with an often intangible attractiveness – bring meaning and beauty to our lives. And nearly every story we might call “significant” also holds some real value for worship.

A significant story connects us with a dream we had once or one we have yet to articulate. A significant story reveals our flaws while modeling the kind of people we want to be. A significant story narrates beauty, truth and goodness (even while it narrates ugliness, falsity, and evil) so that we have a basis for a response to the ultimate ground from which those positive qualities emanate.

So, what stories are significant for you? Specifically, our question of the week is: What is the very first significant story you can recall hearing? Share with us at least the story’s title – if not, a bit of the narrative – in the comments of this blog post.

And vote in this week’s poll to register the qualities you find to be most important in a good story.

What makes a good story? Choose up to two answers:

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Trinity and Worship (part 2): Shaping Communal Acts of Worship

by | June 17, 2011

This post was written by Robin Parry. Read part one here.

Here is something I wrote a few years back and I still think that it captures how I see the heart of the issue:

Christian worship should seek to bring God’s church into a dynamic encounter with the Christian God—the Holy Trinity. Such worship will ceaselessly move back and forth between the threeness of God and the unity of God. It will shift focus from Father to Son to Spirit and back again in a restless celebration of divine love and mystery. It will also highlight the perichoretic [i.e., the interpenetrating] relations within the Godhead by not allowing the worshippers to lose sight of any of the persons. At times the worship will draw the Father into focus, however, the Son and the Spirit will still be there—out of focus but within our field of awareness. At other times the Son will attract our attention, but not in such a way that we do not see the Father and the Spirit as well. When the Spirit attracts our worshipping attention it will always be as the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. Worship that makes us aware of the interrelationships within God is fully trinitarian worship. Trinitarian worship is always “through the Son” and “in the Spirit”, but it is woven from an ever-changing mosaic of songs, prayers, Bible readings, testimonies, Spirit-gifts, sermons, Holy Communion, drama, art, and more besides. The variety is endless and the possibilities infinite, but at the heart of it all stands the mystery of the Holy Trinity. This is what Christian worship is.*

The key to shaping trinitarian acts of public worship is found in being grasped by this radical, relational vision of God and being intentional about making it central to worship. The rest is inspired imagination informed by immersion in tradition.

There are a zillion and one creative ways to do this—dynamism and flexibility are themselves characteristic of this God—so fixing the “perfect” shape in stone forever is not necessary (though I do think that formal liturgies can play a very constructive role). But intentionality is fundamental. Because songs are so central to contemporary worship gatherings—in some recent traditions composing the vast majority of the act of worship—and because the lyrics of such songs are often simply “Jesus” or “You Lord” songs, then, if the music leader is not intentional about shaping Trinitarian worship there is a good chance that the worship will be subChristian. I have been part of many Christian acts of worship in which the Father and the Spirit did not get a look in, whether in song, prayer, or sermon. If that is the balance of things in a congregation over a period of time then the spirituality of the members of that community will be less than robustly Christian.

So looking at the shape of the whole “act of worship”—the choice of songs, prayers, ritual acts, ministry, sacraments, performing arts, and so on—will be fundamental. The question is this: will this worship event help facilitate a rich encounter of the people with the triune God—the God made manifest in the story of Christ?

It is not about using the words “Trinity” or “triune” a lot. Nor is it about making sure that every song or prayer makes mention of all the persons of the Trinity. The issue concerns the shape of the whole narrative encounter with God in any single worship gathering and over the span of several.

Here is my heart: I am not suggesting that worship curators make worship all about the doctrine of the Trinity. Rather, my point is that we should allow the trinitarian shape of God’s relationship with creation to come to the surface in our worship in a zillion and one different ways. If we seek to do this then I believe we can serve as Spirit-inspired instruments to help congregations learn how to perceive, to love, and to follow the three-in-one God.

*Robin Parry, Worshipping Trinity: Coming Back to the Heart of Worship. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005, 185–86.

© Robin Parry

Image © iStockphoto

Robin Parry (presenting his own visual metaphor for Trinity in his photo) is an editor for Wipf and Stock Publishers. He lives in Worcester, England, is the husband of one wife, the father of two daughters, and the owner of a three-legged cat (very trinitarian). Prior to working for Wipf and Stock he used to run a British theological book imprint called “Paternoster” and, before that, he taught Philosophy and Religion to 16–19 year olds. Robin’s books include Old Testament Story and Christian Ethics: The Rape of Dinah as a Case Study, Worshipping Trinity: Coming Back to the Heart of Worship, The Evangelical Universalist (written as Gregory MacDonald), and the Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary on Lamentations. He has also edited volumes on evangelicalism, Christian universalism, theological epistemology, biblical theology, canonical hermeneutics, Jewish and Christian interpretations of Lamentations, and exorcism. Robin attends a charismatic evangelical church and likes swimming and reading crime fiction. His blog is here.

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Finding the Narrative

by | March 18, 2011

This post was written by Steve Collins.

For me, as for Jodi-Renee Adams, the heart of curation lies in telling a story and inviting our fellow worshippers to follow, from one place or state of being to another. The curator and the team work to find a narrative path through the material and ideas available, editing and pruning them and discarding even the best material if it no longer fits the emerging story – there will be another time to use it.

The traditional shape of the Christian liturgy has a narrative that takes us from the world and self-interest to encounter and transformation, and back into the world again as God’s agents. I suspect that some of our boredom with inherited forms of worship comes from the obscuring or hollowing out of that narrative – parts are no longer legible, parts have been removed. Maybe the long Protestant sermon is a disruption, a part that usurps the whole! But the old journey is still a necessary one for our spiritual health. However, I think other journeys are possible.

a glass of wine flung like blood over symbols of the things we must die to

My own community, Grace in London, has always used a particular approach – each service has a theme assigned to it, a rough idea that the team for that service will flesh out from scratch when the time comes. They may choose to structure the themed event around the traditional liturgy, as a framework to ensure that we have included the elements of the expected spiritual journey. However themes often create their own structure, out of their own internal logic and narrative, which may bear little or no resemblance to any standard church service. If it seems like a risk to let ideas grow to their own natural shape, it’s also a risk to force them into a preconceived notion of liturgical structure.

Sometimes material is resistant to narrative. It’s all good stuff, but we can’t find the storyline. We’ve experienced the recurring problem of finding compelling intellectual content that the team has really enjoyed discovering and discussing, that would make a great sermon or lecture. But we’re not in the business of sermons or lectures, but of participation and interaction. So we have to go through agonies figuring out how to convey our ideas differently, so that it’s not all words, not all done by us. I’m not sure that there’s any way to stop this difficulty arising – sometimes congregational activities come tumbling in playful splendour out of the most abstruse themes, and sometimes a really promising theme leaves us at a loss and unwilling or too late to give up our first ideas.

One advantage of an ideas-based approach is that it isn’t necessary to cover all the ground in one event – there can be multiple parts so that one part is not overloaded or rushed. That requires people to be open to the idea that they will not have the whole journey in one event. Like a TV series, one service might end in an unresolved or dark place. The strength of community worship is that you can take these collective risks – you’re on a long-term journey together, the whole picture will unfold over years. But the visitor may need explanations and reassurance that this fragment or cliffhanger isn’t your only liturgy! We always said at Grace, don’t judge us on one service, come to three.

As an illustration, our last service combined Walter Brueggemann’s understanding of the prophet’s task and methods, with the ‘hero’s journey’ or monomyth as used in movies [Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc.]. This is the first service of two, so it ended with a collective reading of Lamentations 5, a flung glass of wine, and silence. Hope and forgiveness must wait until the next service and be hard to understand, if we are to take the material seriously.

One of the factors enabling this serial approach is the traditional Christian calendar. We can treat an entire season of the church year as a unit of our spiritual journey, rather than trying to run through the whole cycle at every event. The more neglected celebrations of the church year – neglected in our church backgrounds anyhow – can be put back into an enriched pattern of communal living. Each season has its own narrative, its distinctive plot points, its irregular chapters. Right now it’s Lent, which is a season that seems to resonate with Grace. What season resonates with your community? What storyline do you follow through it, collectively and as individuals?

image & words © Steve Collins

Steve Collins is a member of Grace alternative worship community in London. He is an architect specialising in corporate interiors, and works for a large practice in central London near Tate Modern. His websites include a photographic archive for alternative worship events; his personal site; and the directory site. He blogs at Small Ritual.

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The Risk of Narrative Worship

by | March 15, 2011

It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story. Nothing in human history has had the sheer energy and transformative reach of story. Since people could sit around a fire, the common will was found through epic song, narrative, myth. As we emerge from the limited power of reasoning, religious separatism, personal autonomy it would seem that we are rediscovering this: this impulse to find our meaning in Story.

I’m a wanna-be anthropologist and historian. Even my kids are nerding out on the History Channel and National Geographic these days. Maybe we should do a little less of it, but for now, it’s “family time.” There is some learning that takes place, and, if there’s any lesson to be found in the long history of humankind it’s our collective value around – even need for – Story. Each culture, each people, each era has used Story to preserve their identity, instill values, provoke the communal imagination, embrace the unseen they believed to exist around them.

Inside Christian history, the role of story can’t be under-estimated. The gospel is rooted in and spread by the Story of a GOD who is relentless and reckless in the loving pursuit of humankind. This shows up in our language, in our traditions, in our own practices of spiritual formation. The mass itself is a “little story,” the passion of Christ retold in symbol and ritual; a narrative you can touch, taste, and smell.

The nuclear power of story seems to be built into our own atomic essence. The American writer Muriel Rukeyser said that “the universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” No doubt the psalmists knew this as well. This narrative language comes pre-loaded in the human operating system that rises above culture, time, economic development. When the powers that be want more control, they bribe the narrators or squash them altogether. It’s always been this way; we just see it more candidly now. Why are the story-tellers so dangerous? Because they know how to take the content that matters, that speaks to the soul and contextualize it for their people to take in the experience.

When planning a worship gathering, the default procedure is to think about how it will work. I get this. I’m hardly pragmatic in most areas of my life, but I love a good sense of flow and transition; focusing on the how appeals to that part of me. In my best moments, I try to forget I’m a worship “leader” and remind myself that I am a story-teller. A narrator. And as such, I have the responsibility of beautifully and honestly shaping our collective narrative into something that invites participation in something bigger.

In order to do this, it’s imperative that we can articulate the difference between content and context.

Content is the stuff that shapes, convicts, disciples us. Context is the vehicle that gets it from our heads to our hearts, or very often in the case of some of contemporary Christian worship, the other way around. Or to put it another way, context is the means by which our souls are opened to the content.

When we think of the worship gathering as a narrative, it changes how we approach our content – giving more accountability – but frames how we interpret it for our context – giving us more freedom. As much as I believe that there isn’t one right way to worship, I do believe, fiercely, that there is a wrong way: any way that denies our shared human story with GOD. When I encounter churches who only consider singing about the Jesus sitting next to you a complete time of worship, or who think that being “creative” means re-inventing the wheel instead of re-contextualizing the traditions of our shared faith, or who opt out of a regular sharing of Eucharist, or who perpetuate individualistic or therapeutic experiences, I have to wonder: which story are they telling?

But when we take The Story – the mysterious narrative of GOD and humankind and creation – and put it into the dangerous hands of the artists, poets, mystics, it takes on an energy, even quite literally, and starts to hit at those uncomfortable, unnameable places. The places where Divine encounter leads us to spiritual formation.

What would you do differently if you perceived yourself as Story-teller instead of worship leader? How does this affect your content and your interpretation for your context? Which story are you willing to tell in your worship gathering?

image © iStockphoto

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