The Basics of Chronological Bible Storying

Part Two - Crafting the Story by Grant Lovejoy

In part two of The Basics of Chronological Bible Storying were talking about crafting the Bible for telling as stories. Now it should be said that we have a wonderful situation when it comes to telling biblical stories in that they are already told really well in the Bible to start with. So, if in doubt, we follow the Bible in our lead. It serves as our default. But there are some occasions that cause us to need to craft the story to make it more useful in our chronological Bible storying. For instance, some stories are rather lengthy and complicated with a lot of detail that isnt essential for a person comprehending the main idea of the story. The story of Noah, for instance, has a lot of dimensions to the ark, and there are a considerable number of time markers - how long they worked on it, how long the rains came. For most people, those details are not crucial, and, in fact, the story is improved for telling purposes if we summarise, if we leave out those particular details, and instead, focus on statements like Noah did all that God had told him, just in the way God told him to do it. And we dont have to go into all the measurements, and such. So sometimes we craft the story for simplicity in that respect. Sometimes its important to craft the story by reducing the number of proper names in the story, particularly when people have never heard these names, and they are strange names coming from another language and culture. Its really dicult to keep up with six or eight new, strange names. If the names are just mentioned in passing, and arent important characters in this story, or a subsequent one, we may omit them from the story. If the story begins with some sort of travel log where Saul went to three or four villages before he got to the village where the action took place, we simply say he travelled and arrived at -- and name the village where the action really took place. Things like this simplify the story for the listener, give them fewer things to have to hold in mind, and let them zero in on the parts of the story that are the most crucial for our purposes, whether thats evangelism, or discipleship, or leadership training. We also craft the story to try to reduce the potential for misunderstanding. Sometimes there are elements in the story that will be troubling, and we try, if those are not crucial to the story, to diminish the possibility of misunderstanding. Of course, sometimes, the central idea of the story is troubling because it challenges a world view, and in that case, we leave it exactly as is. There is also the matter of crafting the stories to respect and reect the local practices of story telling. We would like to tell the story in a way that they can embrace it as their own story, and one that is not a foreign story, but is told in a way that they can recognize as from their culture. This involves us studying the story telling habits of the people with whom well be telling the story. Cultures often have standardised ways of beginning and ending stories and will have dierent kinds of standardised beginnings and endings, depending on the kind of story it is. In North American and European folk tales, we often begin by saying, Once upon a time . . . Thats a standardised opening, but its not a standardised opening for a true story - its a standardised opening for a folk tale. So it would be, of course, very wrong in our cultural setting, to say, Once upon a time Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It would certainly create grave oense because, by our opening line, weve signalled something about the story thats not so. So, as we study the storytelling practices of the people were going to be working among, its very important to get the right opening and closing lines for the kind of true stories that well be sharing from the Bible.

It will also be important to see if there are customs about who can tell stories and if there are certain places that are the places where true or heritage stories are told. As much as possible, we will try to respect that and reect that in our own practice. In some cases, the stories may not be told so much as they will be chanted, or sung, or put in some other cultural expression. We will work with a partner from that group (if we can nd one) and seek their assistance in putting it into that form as nearly as we can. Those of us working cross culturally from a culture other than the one that were trying to reach probably wont ever do this with great uency. But we can, by our example, and by giving some sort of a permission, free up someone from that culture to do it with a skill that we, ourselves, couldnt manage. When it comes to crafting the story, people often say, How about can I use my imagination to really esh out the story, make it more vivid and add a lot of colour to it? And our answer to that question goes back to the principle of the oral Bible. Because through this method, we are giving people the only Bible that will be available to them, then we must be scrupulously careful that what we give them is, indeed, the Bible and not a gment of our imagination. In a preaching setting where everyones literate, everyone has their Bible open before them and can quickly check to see whats actually in the Bible and whats the elaboration of the preacher/teacher, you could excuse some of that; and in fact, in some cases even applaud it. In chronological Bible storying, we cannot do that kind of gment of the imagination and elaboration in the story. We keep ourselves squarely to the story. We allow ourselves the kind of freedom that a Bible translator would have. There are multiple ways of expressing in a given language what was in the original Greek, or Hebrew, or Aramaic, but within those bounds we try to be careful to be faithful to Scripture. Part of the crafting of the story always has to do with the choice of words and key terms. This is often a crucially important issue, and if were working in a second language for us, its very, very important to work with native speakers to make sure that the nuances and connotations of that language are the ones that we want. So its helpful if we have access to someone who is a Bible translator, for instance, or someone else who is sensitive to the nuances of the language, to try the story out on them in the way we think we would tell it, and let them give us feedback about whether weve told it in a way that really conveys the Bibles essential meaning. As were crafting the story, we also want to be thinking about telling it in a way that facilitates the recall and subsequent telling by the people were trying to reach. There are times we might, ourselves, be capable of a more elaborate, detailed, really impressive telling of it; but if that elaborate, detailed, impressive telling of it, in fact, discourages others from trying to tell it themselves -- if they say, Well, that was such an awesome thing, I could never do it. -- then in actuality we have been counterproductive, weve impeded the reproducibility of it, and we will impede the spread of that story through the people. So that there are times, even if we feel condent doing something really impressive and elaborate, that we need to craft the approach. We need to put it in a package that the people were working with can themselves carry and own. So this becomes a consideration as we look to what we actually have in the Bible and what would be best for the people that were working with.

A question comes up sometimes -- so do you do the application? Where does that come? -- and we come back to say that because one of our basic principles is that the story is oral Bible, we dont add application to the story. That will come in the dialogue time, about which we will talk later in this presentation. It is sometimes necessary to add information into the story. We dont do this very often, but there are some stories in the Bible which assume knowledge on the part of the listeners that our particular listeners will not have. The story of the Good Samaritan that Jesus told, for instance, assumes that His listeners knew what a Samaritan was, and they did. But we could certainly go to places in the world today and tell that story just as Jesus told it, and people wouldnt understand who the Samaritan was. Now, in our practice and use of storying, often we will tell them who the Samaritans were before we ever start the Bible story. I think thats the best practice, to say, In this story to come, Im going to tell you -- Im going to mention Samaritans, and heres who they were. Or you can wait until the subsequent dialogue and deal with it. It is possible, on a very limited basis, simply to insert in the story the briefest possible phrase -- along came a Samaritan, one of the traditional enemies of the Jews, and go right on with the story with no further elaboration. A little bit of that may be acceptable, but preferably it goes into the pre-story session. There are many ways that we try to craft the story -- always with two goals in mind -- the rst, be faithful to Scripture; the second, make it understandable and reproducible.

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