Narratives in evangelism

Spreading the good news to people outside the church, I believe, is best done by example. One cannot (should not) go out to rope people in. Having said that, we now need to look at the examples we are setting. Faith is something deeply personal and people typically come to a faith in times of personal turmoil. Telling personal stories works well in these circumstances.

Bible stories as public narratives are often today only half-understood. People are no longer familiar with Bible stories, or worse, they have some unfavourable interpretations in their heads and have never had the opportunity to inquire about it. I found that may people are dead set to not believe in this God they have heard about, even when told that what they have heard is not quite right. There is a lot of opportunity for re-telling the stories. 

Communal narratives seem to be very much neglected. Especially in New Zealand communities may be reluctant to talk about what they are doing (out of modesty). Our Christian background also encourages us not to talk about the good deeds, so many stories remain untold that could give outsiders a perspective of what a community is all about. 

"Visual messages are deeply personal" (pg 466)

Do you remember the controversy about the Danish cartoons of Muhammed? It enraged some Muslims to the point of violence. Their understanding of the images used in the cartoon was deeply personal – it touched the very core of their beliefs. Christians may get similarly upset about other images. Thus our reaction depends on our personal context and expectations.

The same way the people react differently to images from outside the church, members of a congregation build their own mental models for visual images within the church. An example is our reaction to the image of the priest raising the communion wafer and chalice with wine. On Sunday, we may all see the same image but its meaning probably subtly differs for each of us. A congregation is always a group of individuals that appear similar only to an outsider.

On the other hand, a congregation behaves like single person with own context and memory. Images have different meanings for different congregations and trigger different reactions (as I found out when praying the `stations of the cross’ amidst a Catholic congregation).  

Belonging to a group (congregation) is often defined by the shared meaning of images.

Is it my story or yours?

We need to embrace that there is nothing we can do about the fact that stories mean different things to different people. The meaning of a story, as for any piece of art, is created in the observer/listener’s head. Sometimes these images (meanings) for listeners coincide, but often they will not.

Translated onto Biblical stories, Stanley Fish wrote a seminal book called: „Is There A Text In This Class“. He introduces the concept of interpretative communities and describes how each reader comes with their own bias (set of beliefs and circumstances), thus influencing the way they read7hear a particular story. We know similar concepts from communication theory, where we hear with four different ‚ears’ (a concept by Schulz von Thun): on the levels of relationship, appeal, self-revelation, and objective. The least used
ear is the objective one!

A preacher’s story as well as its interpretation will be listened to with a personal bias. In general, ‘obvious’ stories should not be explained. However, the preacher needs to know the congregation well to make this decision. If we are to embrace the different interpretations in people’s heads, stories can be taken as good starting points for discussions and intended dialogue.