"Tell me your story..."

I once heard a great description of discipleship:

“I tell you my story, you tell me your story –

and over time, our stories should look more like God’s story.”

I love that! I love the idea that spiritual growth is personal but also communal. I love how God’s over-arching story of redemption and re-creation is the context in which we as Christ-followers are living into, every day - how's God's story is the backdrop of our own story. I love that we grow more as we tell our stories and learn about God’s story together.

My small group is doing a bit of an experiment. We’ve been meeting for about four years now. We have fun together, we serve each other, we learn about God together, we encourage and pray for each other as various members take significant leaps of faith in their journey. We have meals together, we study Bible-based curriculum, we discuss, we pray, we share, we serve together, we get together socially - but we feel like we still want more...

Have you ever felt like that about your small group? I hope so. Because like God, we were created to be relational beings. In fact most of our spiritual growth can be described by the term relational. Love one another, accept one another, forgive one another, encourage one another, speak truth in love to one another... We were designed to grow and reach our maximum spiritual potential when we’re living out the one-anothers – basically, when we’re living and growing in community with the help of the perfect community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Have you ever noticed that it’s harder to live out the one-anothers when you don’t really know one another though? I’m not talking about what we do for a living, the cars we drive, or our taste in food or movies. I’m talking about really knowing each other’s stories – defining moments that have shaped our values, people who have helped guide us to make critical life decisions, things we’ve learned in our successes and our failures...

Are there people in your life, even in your small group that you’ve known for a long time but are embarrassed about your lack of knowledge of their key stories – like what it was like for them growing up, how their spiritual journey has unfolded, what their hopes and dreams are...

We as a group made a commitment that we would make it a group priority to really get to know one another. This would be our curriculum for a season - the content of our study would be the stories of our lives. (More accurately, we're studying the stories God is writing in our lives.)

So we started in the summer as we were wrapping up a DVD curriculum we were studying. Each group meeting would start with one question each person would be prepared to share about as we had dinner. The questions went like: “Talk about one person who’s had a big impact in your life” or “What word would you use to describe yourself” – that kind of thing.

When we started meeting again in the fall, we tried what we called “Small Group Member Spotlight”. The idea is each meeting would be dedicated to having three people spend about thirty minutes sharing stories or scenes from their life: defining moments, critical people, lessons, values, etc. We wanted to know “what has been, what is, and what can be when a person is free to dream into the future.”

After that time would follow questions and comments by other group members and concluded with a time of prayer celebrating that group member.

We’ve had only one of these meetings so far, but it was incredible! As stories were told, there were tears, laughter, nods of affirmation... People shared their stories, people brought in show-in-tell items, one member likened eras of their life to certain cartoon characters (colour images were printed on boards and brought in as props!)

Those who shared said that preparing for their sharing helped them to see God in their lives as they hadn’t seen before. Those who listened felt a closeness as they got a better glimpse into each person’s heart. In any case we are ALL blessed because God showed up in each of our stories - imagine that! Our community is richer, stronger and deeper for the experience.

I’ve been reminded again about the simplicity of the power of telling our stories. How well do you know the stories of your small group members? How do you encourage story telling in your small group? Do you ever find that curriculum and agendas can get in the way of knowing each other?

I’ll let you discern God’s wisdom about how to approach this in your small group – I’d be happy to talk more with you about it and brainstorm. But here, I’m only sharing what our small group tried and learned. I’ll end with this excerpt:

“A story-centered small group can offer us new perspectives on our lives, helping us become more aware of themes we hadn’t noticed and areas of hope that may have been buried. We know from Scripture we are called to love one another, which implies community, and it is in the loving that others know we are God’s beloved. The invitation to love in groups is not a sugar-coated, positive thinking kind of love. It is love that is willing to sit in places of grief and doubt, to wrestle alongside others as they struggle with God, and to celebrate moments of goodness, forgiveness, and joy with one another. Love embodied in these ways transforms broken hearts and heals fragmented lives.” (Heather Webb, Small Group Leadership as Spiritual Direction)

What are some experiences, thoughts or ideas you have about story telling?