CHAPTER 7

STORYTELLING THE GOSPEL

Once upon a time, there was a storyteller.

When Nathan went to college in the 1990s, he often volunteered to give the lunchtime Bible talks at the local campus Christian group. He followed the standard twenty-minute model for Bible talks: a two-minute introduction, fifteen minutes of Bible explanation, and three minutes of application at the end. During the middle of the week, he led Bible studies with the small groups. Again, these were standard Bible studies: the group read a passage from the Bible and then answered questions from a Bible-study booklet.

Nathan went on to study in seminary, where he learned the methods of propositional preaching and inductive Bible studies. But when he graduated from seminary and returned to campus ministry in the 2000s, he found that the methods he had learned in seminary were less effective than they were in the 1990s. Moreover, there were now more international students, and they responded poorly to his Bible-study method. Whenever Nathan asked a question, he was met by a wall of polite silence.

That’s when a missionary friend explained to Nathan that most international students are concrete-relational learners. And with recent shifts in culture, media, and technology over the past two decades, the majority of Americans may also be concrete-relational learners as well. This simply means that they prefer learning from stories and not from abstract concepts. This missionary friend suggested to Nathan that he could try storytelling the gospel on campus. This way, whenever Nathan told the gospel, he was doing it in the heart language of the majority of the college students.

TWO DIFFERENT STYLES OF LEARNING

If I say to you, “The water in our city has been contaminated, but if the water is first boiled, then it will be safe to drink,” what will you do? Most of us will heed the advice to boil the water before we drink it.

But in many parts of the world, if that’s all I said, those who heard me will continue to drink the water without boiling it first. What I need to do is tell them a story: “Mary and her children were drinking water from the tap and getting sick. One night Mary boiled her water, and from then on, she and her children no longer got sick when they drank it.” Why is that? Because in this case, they learn better from hearing a story about how something works than from hearing an abstract theory that needs to be applied.

This is the difference between abstract—propositional, ideational, theoretical—learning, and concrete-relational learning. People who prefer abstract learning begin with theoretical concepts which are then applied. But people who prefer concrete-relational learning begin with stories of how things work, and from that they abstract a theory.

WE HAVE TWO AUDIENCES

We evangelize two different audiences, with two different preferred learning styles.

Abstract learners are literate learners. They prefer reading. They learn from points. If they watch a movie, they want it explained. When they look at a painting or sculpture, they look at the written explanation next to it. If you tell them stories, they get impatient and want you to get to the point.

Concrete-relational learners are oral learners. They prefer listening or watching. They prefer the movie over the book. They learn from stories. If you don’t tell them stories, they complain that you are dull, dry, boring, and “don’t live in my world.” If you explain a story to them, they feel patronized.

One style is not better than the other. They are merely different. And one style is not holier than the other. It’s just that different learners prefer one style over the other.

The Bible gives us books for both styles of learning. Abstract learners will prefer reading the epistles in the New Testament. But concrete-relational learners will prefer the stories in the Old and New Testaments. Estimates are that four out of five people in the Western world prefer concrete-relational learning. And nine out of ten non-Westerners prefer concrete-relational learning. So if we wish to reach these majorities as evangelists, we should communicate more for the concrete-relational learners than for the abstract learners. Moreover, the content of the gospel—which is a story—is better suited to the form of storytelling than propositional communication.

If this is true, why is there sometimes pushback to using storytelling for evangelism, preaching, and teaching?1 I believe it is largely because people evangelize the way they were evangelized. Or people get used to one style and then confuse this style with the gospel itself. They confuse orthopraxy with orthodoxy, form with content, and pedagogy with theology. The great irony is that when we talk about just preaching Christ crucified and not worrying about the need for a rhetorical method, we are, in effect, privileging one rhetorical method over any others—the abstract, ideational, propositional, logical, linear approach to communication.

It comes down to a preferred pedagogical sequence. Do we go from the abstract to the concrete, or the concrete to the abstract? Do we go from theory to practice, or practice to theory? Do we go from the universal to the particular, or the particular to the universal? There is no right or wrong way. There is no “you must do it this way or you’re doing it the wrong way.” They are just different ways. For different learners.

If you study a trade such as carpentry, plumbing, or building, you begin with the practice during the day, and then you go to night classes for the theory. The sequence is practice to theory, concrete to abstract, and particular to universal. But when I studied medicine as a doctor, I spent five years in medical school learning the theory—anatomy, physiology, and pathology. And then I graduated, worked as an intern in a hospital, and began the practice of medicine. The sequence was theory to practice, abstract to concrete, and universal to particular. This wasn’t my preferred learning style. But after five years of med school, I got used to it and learned to tolerate it. And then I learned to teach the same way that I had been taught. I knew no other way.

We do the same when we train people for professional gospel ministry. We give them years of theory—Greek grammar, exegesis, theology—and then they begin the practice of ministry. So they learn abstract, propositional, ideational thinking as their preferred learning style. And they teach the same way that they’ve been taught even though this might not be the preferred learning style of most of their listeners. They know no other way. And orthopraxy gets confused with orthodoxy.

I find it interesting that since I’ve left med school, the pedagogical pendulum has swung the other way. I’ve heard from med students who are studying today that a lot of med school is now case-based learning. They begin with a case—a story from a patient—from which they have to generate a theory of how to diagnose and treat the patient. So change is possible!

HOW DO STORIES WORK?

How do stories work? Stories work by doing at least two things. First, they communicate concepts without using the words for those concepts. For example, imagine I tell you the story of Icarus:

Icarus was a strong young man. One day, his father made him wings from feathers and wax. His father told him, “With these wings you can fly, but whatever you do, don’t fly too close to the sun. Otherwise the wax will melt and you will fall to your death.”

So Icarus put on the wings, flapped his arms, and began to fly. As he flew, he became pleased with himself. “Look at me! Look at me!” he thought. He kept flying higher and higher and higher. But eventually he got too close to the sun. The wax on his wings melted, and the feathers fell off. With that, Icarus fell to his death.

What does this story teach us? Most of us would say something about pride, arrogance, or hubris. But did you notice that the story itself never uses the words pride, arrogance, or hubris? We all got the point of the story even though I didn’t spell it out. Stories can teach us complicated concepts without even using the words for those concepts.2

Second, stories make the listener see through the worldview of the narrator. As we listen to the story, we assume the narrator’s standpoint. For example, as we listen to the story of Icarus, we take on the implicit worldview of the story:

We might not agree with the narrator’s worldview. But for the story to work, as we listen we have to set aside our worldview and assume that of the narrator.

Stories also ask the listener to “suspend disbelief.” For example, in the story of Icarus, we are asked to suspend disbelief that a human could ever fly by strapping on wings and flapping their arms fast enough. Technically, the listener is being asked to suspend disbelief appropriate to the genre of the storytelling. For example, Icarus is from the genre of Greek mythology. And it is appropriate for us to suspend our disbelief about humans flying with wings in Greek mythology. But it is not appropriate for us to suspend our disbelief about UFOs and time travel in Greek mythology. For example, if Icarus suddenly jumped into a UFO and traveled forward in time, then we would not be prepared to suspend our disbelief for that.

Correspondingly, when we watch a television show like Dr. Who, we are asked to suspend our disbelief about UFOs and time travel because this is appropriate for the genre of science fiction. But if Dr. Who suddenly strapped on wings made of feathers and wax, flapped his arms, and flew, then we would not be prepared to suspend disbelief for that, because that is not appropriate for the genre of science fiction.

In the same way, when we tell the stories from the Bible, the listener is asked to suspend their disbelief about Jesus, miracles, and people rising from the dead. This is appropriate for the genre of gospel story. But whether or not our listener is prepared to grant us that is another story! It all comes down to what genre our listener believes is the gospel—is it mythology, science fiction, or God’s story for them?

One night I was watching TV. A current-affairs show aired a ten-minute story about a family—Stephen, Rachel, and two children—who were very busy with work, sports, and other errands. They were so busy that they had no time to go grocery shopping. Now they were trying out online shopping. It showed Stephen and Rachel going to a supermarket’s website and putting in an order for their week’s groceries. It then showed the shopkeeper at that supermarket receiving their online order—for bananas, bread, and milk. It then showed the shopkeeper filling a basket with fresh bananas, bread, and milk. The shopkeeper looked into the TV camera and said, “Whenever I fill out one of these orders, I pretend I’m shopping for myself and put in only the fruit, bread, and milk that I would buy for myself.” It then showed the shopkeeper loading the groceries onto a truck, and then the truck driver delivered the fresh groceries to the family. Stephen and Rachel were very impressed and said that they were going to do their shopping online from now on.

What did I just see? An advertisement for online grocery shopping, of course! But the TV show didn’t preach propositions at me: “Try out online shopping because it’s cheap, reliable, and convenient.” Instead, it told me a story of people using online shopping: “Look at Stephen and Rachel doing online shopping!” And from the story I could see that it was cheap, reliable, and convenient. And I was able to make the concrete-relational connection: if it worked for Stephen and Rachel, it might also work for me.

This is implicit learning rather than explicit. Concrete-relational rather than abstract. It answers the question, “How does it work?” If you are a concrete-relational learner, then you will have understood what the TV story was doing to you. But if you were an abstract learner, you would have been annoyed and asked, “What was all that about? Where’s the moral to the story? Where’s the explanation?” because you want to hear what the TV story is saying to you.

Gray image of the globe map. What Learning Style Are You?

For fun, we can take this test to see what our preferred learning style is. Are we a literate (abstract) or an oral (concrete-relational) learner? Download a PDF questionnaire to find out your own learning style at ZondervanAcademic.com.

To access this resource, register on the website as a student. Then sign in and download the resource from the “Study Resources” tab on the book page for Evangelism in a Skeptical World.

HOW TO TELL THE GOSPEL WITH STORYTELLING

So how do you do this? What I’d like to share with you is an adaptation I’ve developed of a method of storytelling the gospel, one I learned from missionary friends such as Christine Dillon, Andrew Wong, Aaron Koh, John G., Wycliffe Bible Translators, and the International Orality Network. If you want to learn more about this, I recommend that you begin by reading Christine Dillon’s book3 and website,4 visiting the ION website,5 or enrolling in a Wycliffe Bible Storytelling Workshop. After you have those basics down, you will be able to adapt their methods to find something that suits you and the culture you are seeking to reach.

In what follows, I’ll teach you my preferred way of doing this, but don’t think this is the only way. Over the years, it has worked well for me. But I hope that you discover your own way.

Learning to Tell a Story from the Bible

Start by choosing a story from the Bible. The following are a few of the passages that I have used that work well when you are getting started.

Examples
Genesis 1 Matthew 20:1–6 Luke 12:13–21
Genesis 2 Matthew 22:1–14 Luke 14:15–24
Genesis 3 Mark 2:1–17 Luke 15:1–31
Genesis 4 Mark 15:1–39 Luke 18:9–34
Genesis 6–9 Luke 5:12–32 John 11:1–43
Genesis 11:1–9 Luke 7:36–50 John 20
Genesis 12 Luke 8:4–56 Acts 16:12–34

If I had time to meet with someone over several weeks, I would begin in Genesis and slowly work my way through the Old Testament before getting to the New Testament. But often I have only one meeting with someone, so most of my passages are from the New Testament because I want to get them talking about Jesus. At the same time, I understand the tension this raises, that without the Old Testament, it might be hard for someone to understand who Jesus really is.

After you have chosen a passage, read it carefully several times. The goal is to retell the story in your own words. You don’t have to memorize the story word for word from the Bible. Just remember the scenes from the Bible story and then retell those scenes.

I do this by first reading three different translations of the passage. Typically I pick a literal translation like the ESV, then a dynamic-equivalent translation like the NIV or NLT, and finally a paraphrase version like The Message. I then learn to retell the passage in my own words, using vocabulary that the listener and I would comfortably use in an everyday conversation. Sometimes I also “storyboard” the story by drawing it in cartoon form. Then I memorize how the scenes look and retell the scenes without the visuals, using my own words.

Next, I practice retelling the story to another person who has the Bible passage in front of them. They can correct whatever errors I make. The aim is to retell the story according to the following guidelines (the acronym, which I find easy to remember, is SAM):

Simple: Use only words that the listener understands (e.g., change “Pharisee” to “religious leader,” “synagogue” to “place of worship”). Use a maximum of three names of persons. (If the story talks about Jesus, Jairus, John, James, and Peter, you can change it to Jesus, Jairus, and three of Jesus’ closest disciples.)

Accurate: You can simplify the story by leaving out some things—place names, names of persons, details about a particular location—but don’t add things to embellish the story.

Memorable: Retell the story in a memorable way. What’s memorable? Feel free to use facial expressions, body language, and actions to get the emotion and the drama in the story across to your listeners.

Now tell the story to your listener. You can use an introduction like, “Here’s a story from the Bible that helps explain what I believe. I’m going to tell it, and then afterward we can talk about it.” In informal situations, such as a conversation, I tell the story once. But in formal situations, such as a public talk or a small-group Bible study, I tell the story three times. I tell them, “I’m going to tell a story from the Bible three times. The first time, I want us to imagine the story. The second time, I want us to remember the story. And the third time, you’re going to help me retell the story. Listen carefully, because you’re going to help me retell it, and we’ll also talk some more about the story afterward.”

For another variation, I tell the story once or twice, and then my listeners, in pairs, can have a go at retelling the story to each other. Sometimes I also ask for volunteers to retell the story in front of the whole group. Whenever there is a pause or gap in memory, the rest of the group can help the volunteer retell the rest of the story. Or someone else can take over from where the last person decided to stop.

Leading the Discussion

After telling the story, we can ask the listener these questions to generate discussion:

  1. What impressed you about the story?
  2. What questions do you want answered from the story?
  3. What does the story teach us about people?
  4. What does the story teach us about Jesus (or God)?
  5. What is God teaching you from this story?

Here are some guidelines I suggest for doing this in more formal situations to a group of people. First, before telling the story from the Bible, I sometimes tell the listeners that this is an exercise in postliterate learning, so it works better if they don’t look at their books, Bibles, and computer screens; instead they should look at me. And then I warn them that there will be questions afterward, so they need to listen carefully.

Second, after telling the story, I ask the first question and get listeners to discuss it in pairs, because this generates peer-to-peer discussion (removing any perceived teacher-student hierarchy) and it gives them the warrant to talk out aloud.

Third, I get listeners to share their answers with the whole group. This gives them the warrant to talk out loud. Along those lines, I resist the temptation to comment on or summarize what they have said. This removes me—the teacher—as the all-knowing expert from the discussion. It keeps the discussion at a peer-to-peer level. And more important, it means that I will not patronize their answers, nor will I shame them if they say something that I perceive to be wrong.

After they’ve shared, I repeat the process for the second question.

Note that the sequence of the questions is important. The first question, “What impressed you about the story?” is a safe question for which there is no wrong answer. The second question, “What questions do you want answered from the story?” is also a safe question for which there is no wrong answer. Start with these safe questions to encourage discussion.

In addition, when someone shares a question they want answered from the story, I won’t answer it. I listen to everyone’s questions first, then I choose some of the good questions and have the whole group break into pairs and report their answers to everyone. In this way, the group is responsible for helping each other to learn. And again, it removes me from the discussion as the all-knowing expert.

Sometimes, if no one has asked what I think is a significant question, I say, “I’ve got a question.” I ask my question and then get everyone back into pairs to discuss my question and share their answers with the group. If it’s a large group—say more than twenty-five—then I get only ten to twelve people (five to six pairs) to share their answers for each question.

Why do this? Why so many details and rules to follow for a simple discussion? Because I’ve found that people prefer a dialogue to a monologue for learning. Often it’s hard to generate discussions because the traditional inductive Bible-study method is patronizing for most learners. It becomes a “guess the answer in my head” exercise, where the Bible-study leader coaches the participants to say what the answer should be from the leader’s perspective. And non-Western learners also don’t like answering questions out aloud. They may be quiet processors rather than loud ones.6 I know that in Asian cultures, students are reticent to respond because they don’t want to shame the teacher. The teacher is the expert, and by speaking up, they are being disrespectful. But speaking up also risks shaming themselves. What if they answer out aloud and it’s not the answer that the teacher is expecting? Especially if the teacher does one of those “guess the answer in my head” responses.

Another example of how to lead a discussion: I lead Bible studies at a high-school ski camp that I’ve spoken at for several years now, with usually around forty to fifty campers in attendance, most of whom are not Christians. We ski in the morning, then we meet for lunch and I give some Bible talks. Then we ski again in the afternoon, and after that, we break up into small discussion groups before dinner.

For the lunchtime Bible talks, I do gospel storytelling. One year I shared the following stories at lunchtime:

Monday: Luke 5:17–32

Tuesday: Luke 7:36–50

Wednesday: Luke 8:22–56

Thursday: Luke 8:4–15

Friday: Matthew 20:1–16

For the first three talks, I tell the students that I am going to tell them the story three times. The first time through, they are to imagine the story. The second time through, they need to remember the story. And the third time, I want them to help me retell the story.

Then, for the final two talks, we repeat this process, except that on the third time, I have them retell the story to a friend. And then we go through it one last time with a brave volunteer retelling the story to the entire group. At the end of the day, before dinner, the teenagers break up into their small groups, read the story we looked at during lunch, and go through a set of questions:7

  1. What shocked or surprised you in the story?
  2. What don’t you understand in the story?
  3. What would you say is the main idea in the story?
  4. What does the story teach you about God, Jesus, and yourself?
  5. If the story is true, how will you live differently?

I’ve used this method each year that I’ve spoken at the camp. The teens are friendly, engaged, and intrigued by the stories, and they look forward to the talks. Many want to investigate further, and many become Christians by the end of the week.

Another example is an international hot-pot dinner I attended in the past. Most of the students who attended were from Asia studying for postgraduate degrees. Some were also specialist medical doctors, about twenty-five people altogether, with about one-third of them non-Christians and the other two-thirds practicing Christians. Before the hot-pot dinner, a speaker would storytell Genesis 1–4. They would do this for several meetings, recapping the same stories each week. We didn’t cover any discussion questions during those weeks. After several weeks of this, we’d have a speaker talk during dinner and share the story of Noah and the flood from Genesis 6–9. Most of the non-Christians were hearing this story for the first time, and after the story was told, the speaker would ask the five discussion questions I use at the camp, and everyone would pair up to answer them.

The discussion was lively, lasting for more than ninety minutes. I often had to leave at 11:00 p.m., and I typically was one of the first to leave. What was remarkable was that even though one-third of those attending were non-Christians, the dialectic of the conversation always seemed to lead us toward an orthodox Christian answer without any input from the Christian leader who was facilitating the discussion.

Sometimes when I get invited to speak at a church or conference to give a Bible talk, I use an alternate version of the storytelling method. I introduce the talk by saying, “Studies show that most of us are concrete-relational learners. We learn better by listening to stories. So I’m going to do something that cross-cultural workers have been doing in many other countries. I’m going to tell us a story from the Bible. When I tell you the story, it works better if you just look at me and listen. But if reading is your preferred learning style, then feel free to follow along in the Bible. But for most of us, listening is our preferred learning style, so just watch me and listen.”

I tell the story two or three times and break the group into pairs for the discussion questions. This works even in a very large group. I then walk down from the stage into the audience and take the microphone with me. I get people to share their answers into the microphone so that everyone can hear what they are saying. For each question, I get about six pairs to answer before moving on. I explain, “I’m really excited to hear what everyone has to say, but because this is a large group, I can hear from only a few pairs at a time.”

In my experience, the storytelling model works best if you have at least one-third non-Christians in the group, with another two-thirds Christians. If possible, pair up a non-Christian with a Christian. This way, the non-Christians get to hear from the Christian perspective. Second, you should realize that the story you tell will generate its own questions. It’s the Bible’s own story that generates discussion rather than the questions of systematic theology or a particular application that you have in mind. For example, when I told the story of Noah and the flood, one person asked, “What about the dinosaurs?” Another person, a non-Christian, answered, “But the story doesn’t say anything about dinosaurs, so it’s not relevant.”

As another example, the wording in Genesis 6 says, “And God saw how wicked humankind had become . . . and he regretted making them. . . . and he said, ‘I will wipe them out from the face of the earth’ ” (Gen. 6:5–7). After hearing that, no one has asked the question, “But how can a loving God punish people?” That’s a question generated by abstract, speculative questions about theology. But in the context of the story, it makes perfect sense that God wipes out wicked humankind.

Keep in mind that people will also generate questions from their own contexts. That’s a good thing! In this way, we end up answering questions relevant to each person’s existential, emotional, and cultural contexts. This ends up being contextualized evangelism. And people will also answer from their own perspective, so everyone is enriched by the experience. For example, listening to the story of the woman who is healed by Jesus and the story of Jairus’s dead daughter (Luke 8:40–56), people from Middle Eastern cultures often pick up on how both the woman and the dead daughter were unclean. So when the woman touches Jesus, and when Jesus touches the dead daughter, it is remarkable that Jesus himself doesn’t also become unclean. They also pick up on the woman’s shame and how she is publicly restored by Jesus. That’s why Jesus stops to say, “Who touched me?” because it will give the woman a public opportunity to be declared clean. An indigenous Australian once told me that the funeral for Jairus’s dead daughter would have gone for days, so when Jesus told the parents not to tell anyone that their daughter had been raised back to life, he was focusing on how it would’ve been really hard for the parents to explain why the funeral had been canceled, something I had never considered before.

And that’s an additional blessing to this method. You will gain a deeper appreciation for the nuances of Bible stories as you memorize and retell them. As I was repeatedly telling the story of the jailer in Acts 16, I picked up on how Paul and Silas told the jailer and his family to “believe in the Lord Jesus” (Acts 16:31). But then I noticed that the story ends with the jailer rejoicing that he and his family had “come to believe in God” (Acts 16:34). In the story, a connection is subtly made between believing in Jesus and believing in God. They are the same thing!

Storytelling has the added benefit of explaining complex theological concepts without complicated language. For example, consider the series of stories in Luke 18—the widow who looks for justice (v. 3), the Son of Man who looks for faith (v. 8), the Pharisee who trusted in his righteousness (vv. 9–12), the tax collector who asks for God’s mercy (v. 13), the children who come to Jesus (vv. 15–17), the rich ruler who cannot enter the kingdom of God (vv. 18–25), salvation being impossible without God (vv. 26–27), Jesus’ predicting his death (vv. 31–33), and finally a beggar who calls out for mercy and has his eyes opened (vv. 35–43). All of these communicate the theological idea of justification not by works but by the means of faith based on the atoning, substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. But they do it without using those words or terms. It’s the same idea, only in story form.

CONCLUSION: STORYTELLING IN ACTION

Nathan read books, visited websites, and participated in online forums that promoted gospel storytelling. He practiced storytelling with his missionary friend, who also ran a home Bible study group for those who were not churched but wanted to learn more about the Bible. Nathan’s friend invited him to lead the next Bible study group by using the storytelling method.

Nathan was nervous, but the night was amazing. Many of the people in the group had not been to church before, nor were they Christians. Many were professionals with postgraduate degrees, yet they were so engaged by the storytelling that they covered four stories that night instead of the one Nathan had planned. The discussion was lively and went on for most of the night. And all who turned up were curious to hear more from the Bible and looked forward to coming back the next week.

1. For example, David Cook equates storytelling to an attack on expository preaching! “The only thing new about the current attack on expository preaching is that which nominates to be its substitute—these days, it’s narrative or storytelling,” quoted in Gary Millar and Phil Campbell, Saving Eutychus (Kingsford, AU: Matthias, 2013), ii.

2. I owe this insight to Abe Kurivilla.

3. Christine Dillon, Telling the Gospel through Story: Evangelism That Keeps Hearers Wanting More (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2012).

4. storyingthescriptures.com.

5. orality.net.

6. Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner, Clash! Eight Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are (New York: Hudson, 2013), 1–4.

7. I learned these from my pastor, Ariel Kurilowicz.