The Power of (Gospel) Storytelling

May Highlights

• Scott taught the Greek 1 course to Master of Divinity Students at Asian Christian University (ACU).

• Scott and Alexis represented the missionary profession and inspired high schoolers to reach out to other cultures with the Gospel at a career fair at a local private Christian school, Valor Christian Academy.

• Scott developed a free web app for practicing NT Greek (parsingfun.com).

• Scott completed courses in Contextualization, Reformation History, and Post-Exilic Prophets as part of his MDiv program (only 2 more classes to go! Whew!).

• Scottie, Samantha, and Garrison participated in Lads2Leaders. Scottie gave a speech on remaining holy from 1 Pet. Samantha won 1^st place in Speech. Garrison did an amazing job song leading.

• Scottie got his driver’s license! 😰

• Scott presented on the power of (Gospel) storytelling at the Piedmont Rd. Men’s Prayer Breakfast.

• Preparing for big changes in our mission work. More details to come next month!…

The Power of Storytelling

Twenty years ago (yikes!), the same year I graduated from The Ohio State University, the English department created a new specialty with humble beginnings, designed to study narrative theory, which is basically the assumption that stories have a tremendous role and impact in our psychological development. Now, this area of study is one of the fastest growing in the field of cognitive science, and OSU’s program is one of the largest and most notable in the field.

Granted, those scholars are all humanists, who are not looking for spiritual explanations in how the brain works. But still, we know that they are on to something. We know that God created us, and He created our minds to work in a particular way. Our brains were wired by God to respond to stories.

I recently presented on our mission work to a Men’s Prayer Breakfast. I wanted them to consider alternative ways of evangelizing. So, I talked to them about the power of story. I reminded them about the growing number of unchurched in our culture, and about the way most young people in our culture are accustomed to absorbing and retaining impactful information, through YouTube and social media feeds. For these reasons, we need to be prepared to present the Good News in ways that the culture around us can understand.

Fortunately, we don’t need to manufacture new methods. The Good News is already in the format of a story. It is a grand story that unfolds throughout the pages of Scripture, and it culminates in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Everything prior to that moment prefigures Jesus’ work. Everything afterward explains it. Unfortunately, growing up in a highly literate and educated culture has sometimes caused us to be overly analytical, and we may often distill the great story into a list of propositional statements. Now, there’s nothing wrong with propositional statements. They have their place. But the problem arises when we forget to connect with common people through the power of story.

Almost every day I have been trying to read at least one Bible story to my son, Garrison from N.T. Wright’s children’s Bible, God’s Big Picture Bible Storybook. Besides the precious time we get to spend together snuggled on the sofa, I have really benefited from reconnecting with the stories of Scripture on a more basic level. It has been a nice offset to my intense MDiv studies. It reminds me of the simple truths about God and Christ found in these stories throughout the Bible. And I believe it has helped me be a better storyteller and preacher because I have rediscovered how to connect with people who are just trying to live life and who don’t spend their days absorbed in theology textbooks.

This discovery has caused us to refocus our work at Intercultural Bible and Logos Answers. Going forward, we’re hoping to make storytelling a bigger part of our lessons. For example, we’ve already introduced the animated video, “God’s Plan for You,” and we are in the process of developing an animated Story of Jesus series which will progress sequentially through Mark’s Gospel. We believe this will be a format that connects more easily with the unchurched in our culture, and through translation, with people in nonliterate cultures throughout the world.

Greek at ACU

This semester, I had the joy and privilege of teaching Greek I to the faculty and administration at Asian Christian University, as part of their Master of Divinity program. This was the first time I have taught Biblical Greek as part of a course. My goal was to teach Greek in a way that was interesting and memorable. I wanted the students to walk away encouraged enough to continue studying Greek so that they could read the Greek NT and Greek OT one day on their own. My approach was to spend as little time in grammar (boring!) as possible, and instead, focus more on retaining vocabulary, reading from Day 1, and digging into the theological implications of different translation possibilities. Look at what Junas, the President of the school posted on Facebook. He said that studying Greek was fun! And I am surprised to say it, but teaching it was lots of fun, too. This summer, I will get to teach these same students Greek 2.

In addition to teaching the class, I also wanted to provide a tool for the students to practice on their own. When learning Greek, we need to practice what’s called, parsing. It’s how we become proficient at translating. But as a student myself, I always had trouble finding an app that was either non-buggy, or non-expensive. So, I just decided to create one of my own! It can be found at parsingfun.com. If you know some Greek, check it out and give it a go. Let me know if you notice any bugs (and send me screenshots). Hopefully this free resource can encourage students all over the world to more readily discover the joys of reading the Bible in its original languages.

Love,

The Ihle Crew