The greatest lie that I have ever had to contend with is this, ‘that life is a story about me’.
– Donald Miller, from Blue Like Jazz

Painting is The Tree of Life, by Gustav Klimt

I had a great workshop experience today with the youth ministry team from St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Geneva, Illinois.
My friend Josh Miller, who is the youth director at St. Mark’s, helped me with the training. Josh was a learning coach at our Merge event this past summer, and is so excited about storying!

Two responses from today’s workshop that stand out to me…
One of the volunteers named Steve is a college professor and geologist. He expressed how much he appreciated the fluidity of the narratives, and how effective it is to come to the creation account as a story instead of over-analyzing it as a historical / scientific account.

A school teacher named Liz shared, “Approaching the Bible this way helped me to feel free to ask questions and wonder about God in ways I have never felt free to do before.”

I was so encouraged by helping Josh and his team to begin their journey with storying today!
What a privilege!

I am not a big proponent on distilling God’s Story down to an outline or overly-simplistic story. it is not a simple story, and the more we embrace the mystery and wonder of God and his actions throughout history – to let the story be a (true) story – I think the closer we are to reality. With that being said, I worked on a summary narrative a few years ago that you might find helpful… I am not sure how it will be helpful to you, but here it is…

A SUMMARY NARRATIVE OF GOD’S STORY
© 2006 Michael Novelli, all rights reserved.

This story begins as God, the Creator of all, prepared the earth as a place for life. God filled the earth with plants, water, and all kinds of creatures. The most special of these creatures were humans, formed in God’s own likeness… in his image.

God trusted the humans to care for all of his creation on the earth. He walked closely with them, showing them the best possible way to live. Under God’s reign, the humans were cared for and protected.

In spite of this close relationship, the humans began a pattern of rebelling against God’s and his ways. This broke God’s heart. In his perfect goodness, God couldn’t ignore their rebellion, so he removed his care and protection from them. Now separated from God, humans became subject to sickness, pain and death.

Determined to restore his creation, God chose a man named Abraham and his descendants to be his special people. God made a profound promise – called a covenant – with them, promising that they would extend his blessing and restoration to the entire earth!

These special people, called the Israelites, were chosen to show the world what it means to live closely with God. And God gave them a beautiful land where they enjoyed great blessings, growing into a large nation.

But it was not long before the Israelites struggled and began rebelling against God’s ways. Choosing to live outside of God’s care and protection, the Israelites encountered great pain and slavery from other nations. In spite of their selfish ways, God continued to give his people hope, promising to send a rescuer to bring them back to himself.

Enter a man named Jesus… his life, teaching and miracles all proved he was who he said he was: God’s son in human form! Jesus always chose to live God’s way, never rebelling against him. He showed the world how to live closely with God. He called people to follow him, and return to living under God’s reign once again.

Jesus chose a surprising way to help humans return to God… he took on the required punishment for all of their rebellion. Because he had lived perfectly, God allowed him to stand in as a substitute. After suffering a brutal death, Jesus miraculously came back to life three days later, and was seen by over 500 eyewitnesses.

Jesus challenged those who believed in him to live like he did and extend God’s blessing and restoration to the world. Then, Jesus sent God’s Spirit to live in the souls of humans and give them strength to live this out. This was the beginning of the Church – a community of people across the globe who follow Jesus in living God’s way and share in his mission to restore the world. The story continues with us… we are called to be God’s agents of restoration and love – a new kind of people who will show the world what it means to live in God’s reign and return to the way of life they were created for.

But the story doesn’t end there… one day God will complete his mission of restoring the world, reigning over the earth once again, returning everything back to the way it was created to be. God will live with his people again, and they will celebrate his greatness for eternity!

I got the chance to do a workshop with my friend Seth McCoy’s youth leaders at Woodland Hills Church this past week.  It was really fun… Seth is a really good friend who loves the process and is in a great church. About one-third of the group was high school students (leaders) so that added some energy to the group. I am always amazed at how people respond to God’s story and how deep their observations are. Awesome.