ArticleBlog | The power of stories: helping your congregation see God in their everyday
The power of stories: helping your congregation see God in their everyday
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 12.12.20
s a pastor-preacher, my weeks are dominated by stories. Some of them I am invited into: people ask to meet and then let me into the challenges and joys of their lives. Some I ask to be invited into: people I want to meet, just to ask ‘How’s life?’ Some I’m involved with as a participant: I’m a worker, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a friend.
Swirling around me are all the stories that flow from these situations. I believe God is at work in all of them. Engaging with them is the greatest privilege possible.
The God of the details
And then there’s the Bible. Week by week I try to remind people there’s a story being played out in its pages that offers purpose and meaning to life. As a preacher, I try to help people encounter the Scripture stories in fresh ways. The better-known the story, the more difficult it is for people to be surprised or intrigued, but that’s my task. So I try to help people get a renewed sense of wonder by paying attention to the details the writers offer. I do this because I believe God really is in the details. He’s a God of the particular. He doesn’t deal in generalities. He deals with the specifics: of these people, in this place, at this time.
To bring that out in my preaching, I have to slow down my reading and refuse to opt for generalities. I have to take time to note the way that this story is told, in its particular place and time. Some stories are obvious: parables or historical accounts. Others are more complex to unearth. When we preach from the prophets or the epistles, for example, we’re trying to recreate their original contexts, fully aware that they were written to help their hearers live faithfully in their own time.
I take the time to draw out these original ‘stories’ of Scripture, because if I struggle to take notice of what’s written in front of me in the Bible, I’m equally likely to miss what’s happening in the lives of those around me. And as a pastor preacher that’s the real danger. If I don’t listen, I won’t know our stories. And if I don’t know them, I can’t share them. And if I don’t share them in the context of sermons, people may begin to believe that God doesn’t work as he once did. They may believe God was at work with shepherd boys, or Babylonian civil servants, or fishermen, or tent makers, but not with estate agents, or sound engineers, or retired women in their 80s.
So here’s the crucial point. As preachers, we have to intertwine the stories of God working in and through the everyday lives of people in the Bible with similar stories about ‘people like us’: all ages, all nationalities, disabled and able-bodied, working and retired, well-off and not so well-off.
To do so offers the rich possibility of inspiring our congregations to see that God cares deeply about their everyday lives and has work for them to do right where they are.
Gathering stories
This takes careful listening. And most of us are busy. The people in my congregation are certainly busy living these stories. But as pastor, they’ve set me apart to take the time to listen to their stories, to watch and to name things that are happening – and to help them grow the confidence to see God at work in their own everyday lives. That’s what they need me to do as a preacher. They need me to take time to read the text slowly enough so that they have a chance of seeing their own lives differently.
But as always, there is a temptation to take short cuts, to be more efficient with my time. The challenge for many preachers is how to find stories of God in the everyday and then how to use them.
One of the barriers to discovering the stories that lie scattered in your congregation is the distancing that happens between pastor-preachers and their fellow worshippers. In some cases this happens because the preacher distances themselves from everyone through the week, except in the public gatherings.
But in most cases, I think it happens because the pastor-preacher is only involved with people in their times of real crisis, or when they are discussing the gathered life of the church. These are significant aspects of the role, but there has to be a greater attentiveness to the life of the congregation. And for some leaders that can feel overwhelming.
So how can we gather stories of God at work through ordinary people, all whilst balancing our busy roles? And how can we use them to inspire our congregations to see God at work through them – whoever they are?
