Why Stories and not Sermons?
Posted on 27. Jun, 2010 by Tim Stoner in Blog, Life, art
I love writing stories and was recently hired by an educational non-profit headquartered in Oklahoma City to help them tell their stories. EthnoGraphic Media (EGM), produces films, videos, and other visual and written media. Their target audience is 18 to 25 year olds.
It is challenge for any media company to know which stories to tell. But, for an organization explicitly committed to Christ, a larger question looms like the lumbering elephant inside a pup tent. Why are we telling these stories? The evangelical donors want to know: if it does not convert, or convict, or confront, why invest the time, money and energy? Ultimately, this is a question about purpose and meaning.
Behind these lurks another weightier question: Why bother with the obliqueness of story anyway? Would it not be more efficient to preach a sermon that delivers the truth straight up, undiluted, and packing a knock-out punch? Aren’t entertaining stories a lot like Kool Aid–light and sweet, and good for kids, but not meant for adults? Sermons, on the other hand, are a direct delivery system. They speed the goods to the source with maximum efficiency, like insulin injected into the arm of a diabetic.
According to its mission statement, what drives EGM is a passion to reach “a young, global audience with best-in-class media that addresses the hardest issues from fresh, unexpected angles.” It takes its name from ethnography which is a research method used in anthropology and sociology to describe the nature of a people.
Mart Green, its founder and the producer of the past five movies, is one of the least-likely persons to head-up a film company. Mart is the CEO of Mardel, a chain of Christian and educational supply stores. His father, Dave Green, started Hobby Lobby in 1975 which has grown to become a national chain of over 400 arts and crafts stores across the United States. Mart’s dad was a preacher’s kid and raised his children under the constraints of his fundamentalist heritage. As a result, the Green kids was not allowed to go to the movies. When Mart married and had children of his own, neither were they.
So, it was ironic that in 1998, having never stepped foot in a theater, Mart felt a strange compulsion–he wanted to produce a movie. Granted, it was to be a “Christian” film, but, it was a movie nonetheless. Unable to shake this inexplicable impulse he formed a film company and the documentary Beyond Gates of Splendor was released in 2002. It told the heroic story of five missionaries killed by a stone-age Indians in Ecuador. This movie was followed by End of the Spear, a feature length film tracing the same story line.
was raised by fundamentalist missionary parents, so I respect the seriousness of the question. It is one I have had cause to wrestle with myself. In 2007 I was in Hawaii to speak to a group of film students and writers at YWAM’s School of the Nations. “Why are you wasting your time preparing to work in the movie industry rather than serve in Africa, Asia or Europe?” I asked them. The shock evaporated after I explained two of my core beliefs: there is no needier or more influential people group than the Hollywood community and there is no more powerful means of communication than the arts.
But what if the film (or painting or novel) never mentions Jesus, or if it does, it is as an expletive? What if it does not proclaim the Gospel? What if it depicts evil straightforwardly and has barely a glimmer of hope? Then, in that case, the Christian artist must come to grips with the purpose of art and the nature of the artistic calling. One is required to confront the nature of parable—the role of mystery.
The Protestant church, due to an unfortunate infatuation with tidy systems and perspicuity, has pretty much excised mystery from its liturgy and vocabulary. If mystery is mentioned at all it is only in Paul’s allusion to the inclusion of Gentiles into full membership in the people of God. Since we all pretty well get that now, the mysteries, non-sacramentalists conclude, have all been “solved.”
Christ’s ministry, on the other hand, is a 3 ½ year study in making mystery the main attraction. He performed miracles through mysterious power that left the audience, shocked and awed—“they wondered” we are told over and over. Jesus seemed to like to amaze and mystify. Among mostly illiterate farmers, prior to the invention of the printing press, the circus tent and the movie camera, Jesus was by far the most entertaining show around. And He attracted crowds by telling stories—lots of them.
Mark relates (in the words of The Message) that, “with many stories like these, he presented his message to them, fitting the stories to their experience and maturity. He was never without a story when he spoke” (Mk. 4:33-34). He could have pulled out his alliterated outline and with three logical points and a lovely poem inspired his listeners to life-style change. Rather, during the precious 36 months he had available to redeem the entire cosmos, He spent most of it spinning tales.
Why bother? Why waste time spinning yarns, chewing the fat, telling tall tales? Interestingly enough, this is not merely a problem sparked by the Enlightenment. The disciples of Jesus wondered the same thing. They realized that if a teacher is aiming on making an impact what is expected are feats of intellectual prowess. The audience wants to be impressed by the brilliant parsing of multitudes of conflicting Rabbinic interpretations. And if a homey tale needs to be thrown in, it will at least be explicable.
So, they were a bit put off with all the stories too. Basically, they wanted to know the same thing that bothers many conservative Christians today, “what’s with the indirection of these creative narratives anyway? Why not just preach a good ole sermon?”
The Message’s paraphrase of His response provides the justification for those who choose to utilize the medium of parable (film or fiction) rather than preaching. “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom,” He told them,”—you know how it works. But to those who can’t see it yet, everything comes in stories, creating readiness, nudging them toward receptive insight” Only later, “When he was alone with his disciples, he went over everything, sorting out the tangles, untying the knots” (Mk. 4:10-11,34).
What this shows us is that careful exegesis and methodical instruction is not inherently invalid. Alliteration as a memory aid may even have its place. However, if we take Jesus seriously we will conclude that while there is a place and a time for exegetical teaching (“untangling the knots”), when the crowd is present, stories work better than sermons.
This is made explicit by a cursory glance at the Word of God. The first 100 pages are all stories, followed by an equal break for instruction, leading into 400 pages of historical narratives. The New Testament bursts out of the blocks with five books narrating the events of Jesus’ life and the early church, and concludes with an extended apocalyptic story. It’s worth noting that when God decides to reveal Himself in written form stories are essential. And, when He incarnates Himself, it is in the form of a story-teller.
C.S. Lewis, who vehemently disapproved of tales that preached at the reader, nonetheless waxed enthusiastic about how much theology one could pack into people’s minds under the guise of a good story. The indirection of a gripping “romance” as he called it, was extraordinarily effective in “sneaking past the watchful dragons.” So, it was then, and so it remains half a century later. Because of sin, our guards are up. A good story slips right past the prejudice and suspicion; it distracts the angry bouncer in front of the door.
Our hearts have been won over by the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. By nature we despise the light and are suspicious of claims of absolute authority that threaten our right to be our own gods. But when truth is veiled creatively and engages us on a visceral level it can prod us in a direction we might have rejected out of hand had it been handed to us on a tract.
The filmmaker, like Jesus, has a limited window of opportunity to make an impact with his art. But, he can take heart in the example of His Master who used His one shot at redeeming the entire cosmos by aiming a few inches lower than the brain. His rhetorical weapon of choice was pointed (depending on your cultural influence) either at the gut or the heart. What He wanted was to captivate the imaginative core; that place that controls longing, desire. For what He was after was not a host of believers but disciples. And before the disciple is anything, he is someone who has been captivated by love.
So, why Stories? Because they help shape lovers whereas sermons tend to create students. Knowledge is good, but a heart of devotion is better. Good stories can inexorably point our hearts to embrace love and be embraced by it. They move us, often despite ourselves, to consider what we might never had believed possible. They can so penetrate the world that, in Flannery O’Connor’s words, they actually reflect “the image at the heart of things.”
A story well-told can elicit in even the most satiated and jaded a hunger for what only God can provide. It reminds the restless heart that it was made to praise Him and it will remain restless forever until it finds its rest in Him.
Love is a mystery. So let’s keep telling stories.
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