'When you start telling biblical stories,' they told me, 'there's no knowing where it may lead.' Excited as I was by this inspirational promise (or warning?), I never imagined that within a year it would lead me 5,000 miles to South India, to tell biblical stories and lead workshops for Christians there.
Just 18 months ago, I would certainly not have dreamed of this possibility. That was when I first met Angela Knowles of the Northumbria Community and Telling Place, at a workshop she was leading at a conference on Rural Evangelism. (My parish is neither particularly rural, nor am I particularly an evangelist - so don't ask how the Lord got me there. He was obviously thinking of something, and as for me, I certainly didn't know what I was in for … )
I was so fascinated by the style of text telling that Angela taught - and the apparent ease with which the learning methods she modelled could make possible the 'impossible' task of learning stories - that I decided to try it out on my long-suffering congregation. The result of even that first effort was so striking, with comments like 'I heard things in that story that I…ve never heard before!' that the obvious next step was to devote my forthcoming three-month sabbatical from the parish, to learning more about Storytelling. The highlights from that time included a longer Storytelling School with the Telling Place, and my first ever visit to the States, to attend the NOBS 2001 Festival Gathering.
How one thing leads to another. Again I came back to put into practice what I had learned. In my congregation there is a lovely Indian couple, Rev Vinay and Mrs Colleen Samuel. They have a world-wide ministry which leaves me breathless just hearing about all the different works they have founded and are involved in, including the Divya Shanthi Christian Association in Bangalore. After hearing some of my stories, Vinay and Colleen invited my wife Alison and me to Bangalore to share our skills and knowledge with people there.
Alison, who has recently completed an Oxford University doctorate in early years maths education, was to lead workshops for teachers in the Christian schools, in Divya Shanthi itself (which includes doorstep teachers in the slums) and in some of the Hindu schools. My workshops in biblical storytelling were to be for pastors, RE teachers, seminarians and other church workers.
India has its own strong tradition of storytelling, which made me feel that I had more to learn from them, than they from me. But in fact, although the first missionaries communicated the Gospel by stories, and many of those who work with non-literate people groups still do, many in the mainstream churches seem to have lost the art. They have become accustomed to three-point doctrinal sermons in which biblical stories may be used more as illustrations of doctrinal truth than as a living word. The scriptural readings are often read from behind a big book, with all the possibilities of suppressing life and meaning that that entails - particularly when English is not the hearers' first language. It soon emerged, therefore, that I did have something useful to offer the Church in South India.
The three two-day workshops, two in Bangalore and one in Chennai (formerly Madras), were attended by about 75 people in all, and each followed a similar pattern. On the first day we began with introductions and a light-hearted look at the nature of Story, with the telling and discussion of a familiar traditional tale. I then went on to tell the story of my discovery of the power of biblical storytelling, to illustrate it with the comparison of reading and telling a Resurrection narrative, and then to work with the group on learning a story. I chose Jesus' Healing of the Paralytic (Mark 2.1-12), for its familiarity, drama and content. We explored various strategies for learning as individuals, with a partner, and as a group, together with the ways of analysing, understanding the structure, and beginning to make links from the story to our own experience. Dennis Dewey's Notes on the Process of Biblical Storytelling were an invaluable resource: thank you, Dennis! By the end of the day we were able to invite two or three brave volunteers to tell the story to the whole group.
Day 2 began with a discussion of some of the ways we can use biblical storytelling in ministry. As well as the most obvious contexts of worship, preaching, evangelism and pastoral work, the groups quickly became excited about the possibilities for telling stories in the contexts of peacemaking, gender issues and working with non-literate cultures. All of these are major concerns in present-day India, and we discussed suggestions about possible stories. Whenever they came up with one that is part of my as yet limited repertoire, I told it. I was particularly keen to give people an opportunity to experience, in a small way, the epic telling of a longer section of the Gospels, to rival the traditional Indian epic tellings. So we then moved on to giving each workshop participant a story of their own to work with, breaking up the first few chapters of Mark into sections of 10 verses or less. Reinforcing and revising the lessons of the previous day, each person worked on their story and in the afternoon we prayerfully performed our 'mini-epic'. At the largest of the workshops, we were able to get as far as the middle of Mark chapter 6. It is, indeed, an astonishing experience to hear the breathless pace of Mark's narrative - as if for the first time.
From a standing start to a mini-epic in two days! It was an ambitious project, and I worried that it might not adequately convey the necessary depth of the learning and telling process. But it clearly met the primary aims of the workshops, to enable participants to experience the power of biblical storytelling, and teach some straightforward methods of learning and telling the text. There was a lot of interest in the suggestion that participants should keep in touch and meet up in a few months' time to compare notes and encourage one another: perhaps even the beginnings of a network in South India? Who knows? 'When you start telling biblical stories…'
Apart from all this, the experience of India is simply overwhelming in itself. But that sounds like being another story…