Telling a Better Story
How can my Christian formation leadership help form
Beloved Community?
I firmly believe that the church’s ministry of formation is
rooted in telling and hearing stories. Our world currently suffers from a
crisis of imagination where the unique stories of individuals and cultures are suppressed
beneath an overarching narrative of power and control. The church is called to
be both a place where these unheard stories can be told, and new stories can be
woven together that challenge those narratives keeping us separated and
polarized.
When we walk alongside others and hear their stories, we
begin to awaken to the possibility of a better story for the world than the one
of scarcity and competition. In addition, the Biblical story shows us God’s
plan of abundance and liberation for all people. In the process Anne Wimberly
calls “story linking”, we find the intersection of our own stories with the
Biblical narrative in order to identify our own vocation in bringing hope and
liberation through action and speaking truth to power.[1]
My goal in teaching, preaching and other methods of formation is to continually
create space for these stories to be told and heard. The church’s role in such
a time as this is to tell a more compelling story by letting all voices speak,
even ones that might make us uncomfortable.
[1]
Anne E. Streaty Wimberly, Soul
Stories: African American Christian Education (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
2010), 5.