Telling Stories

Pleasant Nothings

Communicating the Gospel to someone is hard.

Of course I know that a large part of that is due to the reality that people’s hearts are fundamentally opposed to the Gospel, and that my heart is often opposed to risking what people think. But even beyond that, I find that effective evangelism is made a lot harder by a lack of effective communication.

Often times, when I do get up the gumption to share my faith, I find that there is a significant disconnect between what I am saying and what people are hearing. Sometimes that’s because they grew up in church, think they already know what I am saying, and so they stop really listening. Sometimes they simply assume I am a willfully ignorant, wishful-thinker the moment they hear me talk about believing in God. Whatever the reason, many people seem to be unable or unwilling to listen to me when I start using “religious” words.

Cultural Linguistics

Now obviously I cannot give up trying to tell people about the best news I have ever heard just because they do not understand what I am saying. But I also sorta doubt it will be helpful to simply repeat myself, even if I did it a little slower and louder, to see if they understand me the second time around.

So recently I have been pondering how I can effectively navigate the waters of people’s presuppositions and the swirling current of cultural phraseology to more effectively share my faith. It will be no surprise to those of you who are the frequent audience of my less disciplined ramblings to hear that I have found the idea of story to very helpful in this regard.

Actually, story is increasingly the way that I understand God’s saving and sanctifying work in my own life, and so some people could probably see this as just a complicated way of saying “share my testimony,” In one sense, I probably agree, but I want to do more than simply tell people what God has done for me individually.

I think that the Bible itself is telling one big story, you might say “The Story”, of how God is revealing his glory by redeeming a rebellious world to himself. What’s more, I think that we are all playing a part in that story, and that learning to play our part is the purpose for which so many people are looking, which presents an interesting way of presenting the Gospel.

The need for the Gospel is written across world history, and all over the story of people’s lives. I expect that if you looked closely, you would find that most people feel directionless because they are living in a story that is only as big as their own “dreams”, while they were meant to live for a Story that is much bigger. As Christians, we have the advantage of knowing that The Story, and how he desires us to fit into it. I think, that if I understand that story well enough, I can ask people about the story of their lives, and point out what it is missing, that is, where it needs the Gospel.

Even better, I am pretty sure I could do it without having to use very many “churchy” words. Or even if I did use words like “grace”, “forgiveness”, “redemption”, and the like, they would be used in terms of people’s lives, and so it would be much hard to misunderstand what I meant. I could give examples of the stories of the lives of friends who had found redemption of their own story by fitting it into the One Story that God was telling all along. I do not know if this approach can make people more willing to accept the Trust, but I think at least it can help them better understand what the Gospel actually is.

This method of sharing my faith will not be quick, and it will probably require me to listen much more than I talk (not something I am used to). But I think in a world of increased Biblical illiteracy and open antagonism to the Gospel, that we are going to have to learn to be patient, fight the long fight, and trust that the Spirit is working even when we cannot see.

To Be Clear

Now I am not saying that we should never try to share the Gospel with the random person next to you on the plane for fear that they will misunderstand what you mean. Accurate communication of the Gospel will always be a work of the Spirit, and the amount of groundwork done before hand is irrelevant when He decide to turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Nor is this an attempt to make the Gospel more palatable or less offensive.  In fact, what I have understood of God’s Story puts us as something equivalent to the Orcs of middle earth. So please do not hear this as me looking for an easy way out of sharing the hard truths in the Bible.

What I am saying is that we need to recognize that effectively communicating the Gospel is not easy, and will not be getting any easier. We are commissioned to do everything in our power to overcome that challenge. Maybe you can do that by putting things in terms of stories, maybe you have another way of understanding and communicating the Truth. So long as what you are sharing is informed by God’s Truth, the method is not all that important. What is important is that you and I are actively seeking to better understand the Gospel, and how to better communicate it to the lost around us.

Personally though, I think “The Gospel as Story” is going to be hard to beat.