Story telling

I remember hearing Dan Allendar teach on story at a conference in April of 2006. Wonderful conference. At one point, he was illustrating a point about story by telling a part of his own story. A Christian was trying to teach him, and Dan confronted him with "tell me a story, not facts". Allendar has found that understanding comes from stories, not a list of facts.

Story has been described as the language of the heart. I know that some of my greatest growth as a Christian has not come from purely "knowledge" studies, but rather from hearing the stories of others. The Bible itself is mostly a collection of stories -- I believe I heard an estimate of 70% of it being story. I think that's low.

Story sharing should be more a part of our gatherings. As it is, most weeks the only one who can tell a story is the guy controlling the monologue sermon, if that is the type of church you go to (the majority of them). Some have "testimonal time", but we need to be much broader -- though the word "share a testimony" is used, when done in corporate settings it is more often "tell your testimony" not share.

When story sharing is incorporated into our gathering, we come to realize that our stories are an extension of what we read in scripture. And scripture becomes the backdrop of our stories. Rather than some artificially arrived at "six steps to a better marriage" derived from scripture (or contrived from), we see God's story continuing into our lives. We become encouraged and are spurred on by such a perspective.

I don't know how this is done for gatherings of 25 or more. Love to hear ideas of how to have a free flow sharing of stories of our lives in larger gatherings, as that is the way most churches are constructed. Sometimes our stories are unfolding as we share them. How's this done in large settings?

Maybe it can't. Maybe our central gatherings need to be what is advocated on these pages -- small gatherings of a handful.