N.T. Wright Project

There has been a lot of conversation the past few years in my church communities concerning the importance of story.  It is true that we are told hundreds of stories every day through books, television, conversation, advertisements…and I have heard countless pastors and other writers and speakers acknowledging that fact and encouraging us to reclaim story for the church.  Most memorably in my experience, Donald Miller spoke at the Willow Creek Shift Student Ministry Conference in 2007 as a featured speaker, and the central theme of his message to thousands of youth pastors was the importance of story.   So when I picked up Tom Wright’s “New Testament and the People of God” and found him, once again, arguing the centrality of story, I wasn’t expecting to gain many new insights.  I’d heard it before, you know?  But the following passage (yes, I know it’s long…) has stuck with me as I’ve continued through my week.

“Stories are, actually, peculiarly good at modifying or subverting other stories and their worldviews.  Where head-on attack would certainly fail, the parable hides the wisdom of the serpent behind the innocence of the dove, gaining entrance and favour which can then be used to change assumptions which the hearer would otherwise keep hidden away for safety.  Nathan tells David a story about a rich man, a poor man, and a little lamb; David is enraged; and Nathan springs the trap.  Tell someone to do something, and you change their life-for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life. Stories, in having this effect, function as complex metaphors.  Metaphor consists in bringing two set of ideas close together, close enough for a spark to jump, but not too close, so that the spark, in jumping, illuminates for a moment the whole area around, changing perceptions as it does so.  Even so, the subversive story comes close enough to the story already believed by the hearer for a spark to jump between them; and nothing will ever be quite the same again” (NTPG, p. 40, emphasis mine).

This has such implications for those of us in ministry!  How often are we tempted to just tell someone the answer because it is quick and easy, rather than taking the time to engage them in a story which will have a lasting impact on their life?  Finding the right story to allow the spark to jump naturally takes patience and creativity…and faith.  But reflecting on my own past and the conversations that have changed my life, it is the ones in which I was guided by story and then allowed to make the connection myself that have truly shaped me.

This passage has also caused me to reflect on the need for artists in the Christian community.  It is often through the form of art that stories can be told most simply and beautifully in ways that speak to people on many different levels.  Art is the perfect medium through which to suggest a metaphor and watch the sparks jump.