Once Upon a Time: The Power of Stories

What does storytelling mean

Storytelling, in its simplest form, is communicating information through the method of stories. Google defines a story as an account of events or people, but when you use storytelling to convey information, you don’t simply state facts in plain terms with no organization. You gather your information and you weave it into a narrative. This can look different depending on the situation.

If you’re a fiction writer, of course, you’re telling a completely made up story. To do it well, you don’t want to just state the facts. You want to create a compelling image within your readers’ minds. You want your characters to feel real and each subsequent step of the plot to feel natural and necessary.

On the other hand, if you’re a journalist, you only want to state the facts. But storytelling is still a crucial element of journalism. Journalists evaluate all the information they have, and then they begin to structure facts and quotes in such a way that they tell a story. Every placement must have thought behind it. For example, if you’re reporting that a house burned down, you’re organizing the narrative of the event: the players (who was involved), the damage and response (what happened), the cause (what started the whole story), etc. 

But storytelling doesn’t just apply to writers, whether they be fiction or nonfiction, it applies to us as small group leaders as well. Like journalists, we want to share the facts with our students. But we want to do so in a compelling way. And, as Students With a Testimony, our entire attitude surrounding the weekend is based on one story: Jesus’s. It is our testimony, our account of Jesus that is our most powerful tool for communicating the truth.

Why use storytelling

The Brain

As humans, we are all designed to understand stories. It’s just how our brains work. For example, we use phrases all the time that tell us stories about other people. If I say “Annabelle is a chicken,” you immediately understand a narrative about Annabelle. She’s easily scared, probably a wimp, and refuses to face challenges or take risks. I could have said all those things about Annabelle, but by calling her a “chicken”, I conveyed the information quicker and in a way that immediately created an image in your mind. 

The Culture

Stories are how the culture around us works too. Movies, TV shows, and books are all devoured by children, students, and adults alike. Marketers tell a story about their product, public relations professionals about their clients, and journalists about what’s going on in the world. There’s a reason why advertisements are so successful. Stories interest us, engage us, and lead us to a goal. 

The King

Jesus understood this truth better than anyone else. And he used it effectively in his own ministry. How did he teach people while he was here on earth? He told them stories. The parables were simple stories used to illustrate spiritual truths to Jesus’ audiences. They had a double power to them. First, if people refused to believe, they wouldn’t comprehend the truths within the stories. But, if they did believe, the truths hit harder than if Jesus had just plainly stated them.

Think about it. Someone can tell you “God loves you” all they want. But when you read the story of the Prodigal son, you actually realize deep down just how much God loves you. Stories penetrate our hearts in a way that plain statements never can. Stories can have a sort of magical power - formed with metaphors, narratives, emotive language, and the like - to make things make sense. If you’ve read any of the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, you understand the impact Aslan has on readers. The fear and love invoked by Aslan is an incredible narrative that allows readers to understand our relationship with God in a way that sermons just can’t accomplish. 

So if our King used storytelling so much, shouldn’t we also?

How to incorporate storytelling

Mindset

Like so much of what we talk about, storytelling in small groups starts with a change in the way you think. You can never look at a session, question, or statement in isolation. Instead, you have to train yourself to see the connections. Storytelling is all about connecting the dots. You can also think about it like putting together a puzzle. All the different pieces: this Scripture verse, that question, those comments, look so different. But they can all come together to form a cohesive narrative (and image) in a student’s mind if you fit them together. 

Organization/Narrative

So what does this look like? When you’re preparing your curriculum, read through the whole thing first. Then map out the overarching theme/takeaway of the curriculum and the key points of each session. The main takeaway (summarize it in a sentence if you can) is your desired goal. That’s the end of the story. The key points of each session act as pivotal moments in the “plot” along the way. Every one is necessary and they should each build upon the last. All of the verses, questions, and conversations then should guide your students from plot point to plot point. The key here is that everything is intentional. No comment or question is wasted. Everything you do is moving students along a path, along a narrative, to the end of the story.

Now of course, your students will ask a question you didn’t plan for or answer in a way you weren’t expecting. That’s ok. No story is a perfectly straight line. Usually the path to the end is meandering, going forward then backward then forward again, and occasionally just spinning in endless loops.

The point here is that you have a plan. You are not all over the place. You know the key points and the final takeaway. And even though your students may shoot off into rabbit trails, you are carefully and intentionally guiding them back to the right path. Your small group will almost certainly look nothing like you expected it to. But if you know the key points of the narrative, you can still convey a cohesive truth to your students, no matter the route you took to get there. But how?

Questions/Train of Thought

We here at SWAT want our small groups to be question-focused, and you can learn why here. One of the ways we suggest you approach a question-based small group is through creating a train of thought. This whole concept is key to storytelling. 

We want to start at the end: the desired goal, the one takeaway, etc. Then we want to work backwards step by step to see how we need to reach that goal. Once we understand each step, we can guide our students along to the completed narrative! 

Stories (aka Testimony)

Now of course, we want to use actual stories in our small groups as well. As we’ve talked about before, your testimony is incredibly powerful. That’s because it is your life: your raw, unfiltered, authentic life. It is your failures and your successes. It is the day by day living of one whose hope is in Christ. Your students need to hear your stories, and you need to share them.

Conclusion

We often view the world as one moment after another, each disconnected from the last. But that’s not how the world works. We’re all living in one gigantic story, where Jesus is the hero and we are his people, priests, warriors, friends, and bride. Your life is a story within that story. It’s not random. It’s been planned by the greatest Author. So remember that when you approach your small group. Remember that you are there for a reason. Remember that every step of your life is intentional, as rabbit-traily as it may feel. And when you can view your life as a story and this world as the story, then you can incorporate the story structure into your small groups. Like we said before, there’s a reason we as humans instantly connect with stories. It’s because that’s what our world is.

Small Group Interns - Nic & Sophie