Joyce Hankins / Unsplash
This summer, families will gather in groups large and small for reunions and vacations. Eventually, after a satisfying meal, someone will say, “Do you all remember when…?”
That’s the beginning of a story everyone probably knows — yet it will be retold, and people will laugh or cry like they are hearing it for the first time.
Stories are not just for celebrating history and connection. Good stories are the lifeblood of great leadership. In organizations, as in families, stories connect people across different generations and from different walks of life. When congregations revisit their origin or leaders cast a vision of what is possible, they don’t simply convey historical facts or provide statistics. They invite people to remember old stories and imagine new ones.
Christian leaders have a distinct advantage because the sacred text that undergirds our mission is a compilation of stories: “In the beginning, God…” Our work is a story that is unfolding within God’s redemptive drama in the world.
The power of storytelling has been confirmed by modern science. As we hear stories, our brains synchronize with the brains of the storyteller. We feel what the storyteller feels. Our palms may sweat, and our heart rate may increase. When we tell great stories, we have a much better chance of inspiring a congregation than we do by using data alone or by talking about ministry in a generic sense.
If we want people to understand the gift of church membership, we should tell a story of how belonging has impacted the life of one real person. If we want to inspire volunteers, we should communicate what happened to specific people who served in ministry. Good stories connect people, capture our attention and inspire us to act.
Resources
As America marks its 250th year, the church has a crucial role to play in accurately telling the nation’s story
The Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri’s ministry of writing and sharing daily prayers touches people beyond his parishes, as does his family’s experience of a traumatic year caught up in the federal crackdown on immigrants.
Interview with Deon K. Johnson
Events and books help undocumented immigrants tell their stories
A Texas seminary shares the stories of immigrants as a way of breaking down barriers and building better lives for immigrants in the U.S.
By Mónica Tornoé
‘Between the Listening and the Telling: How Stories Can Save Us’
In this excerpt from his recent book, a writer and spiritual director describes the transformative power of sacred stories and why they are important to our individual and shared lives.
By Mark Yaconelli
Churches need to do the work of welcoming others and their stories
Stories are sacred — especially the stories that are undertold and suppressed, says the author in an excerpt from a new book that tells her own story of rediscovering God as a Potawatomi woman.
By Kaitlin Curtice
Before you go
Children have the uncanny ability to listen to and ask for the same story before bed night after night. Mine did. Sometimes I would tell them biblical stories, with my own dramatic version of the sacred text. This might have been inspired by my first assignment in my seminary preaching class, in which we had to give a presentation of an Old Testament story using whatever creative approach we wanted. I absolutely loved this assignment. What I chose to do was to tell the story of David and Goliath, but from the perspective of David as an older man, telling it to Solomon as a bedtime story. Although the assignment was connected to the craft of preaching, it taught me the importance of storytelling as a leader.
Maybe it’s time to sit down with your leadership team and ask what stories you want to tell about your church a few years from now. Doing that could help show what you need to do next.
You can always reach me and the Alban Weekly team at alban@duke.edu. Until next week, keep leading!
Prince R. Rivers
Editor, Alban at Duke Divinity