sustain:if:able kiwi

what lurks deep

Storytelling. It’s the mantra of postmodern communication. All roads lead to a story. Stories, stories everywhere.

We explored the place of story and storytelling in contemporary communication in class today.

I get so sick of being told the theory of storytelling ie we need it. Much more practical, much more useful, to run a storytelling workshop. So I did. Lets actually do the storytelling.

I was a bit mean. I threw them a gospel story, gave them 5 minutes to compose a first, last and climatic sentence. Times up, so in 2’s tell your story.

The time pressures bring a number of issues to the surface.

Firstly, to tell a story requires detail … and so the reminder that good storytelling requires good background knowledge, good exegesis. It requires you to read and research, to be in the commentaries and guides to early Biblical times.

Secondly, that the Bible is story. And so I provocatively pushed the class. Go on, be Biblical. Stop preaching and be Biblical. Let the story be a story.