Storytelling
Experiences of Storytelling, Scholarship, Teaching
Biblical Storytelling and the Experience of Liminality
When the Word written becomes the Word experienced by the collective whole in the present moment, the participants can become abducted by the power of the story. When a story resonates in the heart of the audience they exist, if for a brief time, betwixt and between two worlds, between the world of the Biblical story and their own. Cultural anthropologist Victor Turner referred to such an experience as liminality. It is in the liminal state that we are freed, if only temporarily, from the structures that restrict us, and therefore are open to see the possibility of change.
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When I tell a story, whether it is a Biblical story or not, I want the listeners to be able to see, hear, and experience the story without hindrance. I don’t want the words I use, my movement or lack of it, dullness or over exuberance, or any other such factor to stand in the way of the hearer getting the something that the story may have for him or her, personally, to take away from the experience. That’s what I hope for and strive for anyway. So, knowing my audience and the purpose for my telling are key factors in the shaping of how I tell the story.
My first consideration in preparing the story, is determining purpose. Sure, the story is the thing, and communicating that story well is the ultimate goal, but, a major driving force for me in the preparation of a story is what I want the hearers to get from the story I share. For me, stories are as C.S. Lewis calls them, “love gifts.” I, therefore, try and find the something special in the story that I want to leave with the hearer once the words have all been said. Do I just want to provide information to the listener? Even so, how do I do that so that the information sticks and stays? Do I want to communicate an important truth, give a reassuring hope, or do I just want to provide entertainment that may lighten the load for the present and provide a pleasant recollection for later? To this end, there are several things I consider when I am preparing to tell a story to a particular audience. Although there may be other factors to consider, I primarily consider language, length, delivery, and participation.
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Since 1990, I have told stories before audiences, ranging from toddlers in age to seniors. I have told stories to these audiences on topics that range from folk and fairytales, to personal, to historical, and to faith and Biblical stories. But even before I came to be called a storyteller, and certainly long before I attended a N.O.B.S. conference or even knew there was such a group, I was telling stories of faith that were taken from the Bible or based upon Biblical truths.
As a Sunday School teacher, and then, later, as a storyteller in and for various church occasions, I have told these stories in various ways: by adding dialogue to Ezra’s story and having the students act it out; by adding rhythm and rhyme to make a poem of David and Goliath; by adding a hand clap game and chant: “Friends for life, friends to the end. Thank you, God, for my good friend” to help communicate the depth of friendship between David and Jonathan; by setting God’s work of creation within the frame of a song.
When it comes to telling the story, and especially the faith story or the Biblical story, my desire is that whoever is hearing and seeing and sharing the experience will “get it.” That they will “get” whatever the story has to offer, and that they will be enticed enough to go to its source for more. So, whenever asked to tell the story I have always asked, “How do I tell it, so they (whoever the audience may be) get it?”
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33 Years As a Biblical Storyteller
Biblical storytelling has transformed my life as a scholar, a teacher, a pastor, and a person hungering for a deeper life with God. The seeds of it were planted and began to germinate during my two years at Union Theological Seminary, New York, where Tom Boomershine talked a lot about telling Biblical stories. For some reason I was never present when he told one, until he asked me to be present at the recording of part of Mark’s passion narrative he made to go with his dissertation. I don’t remember anymore whether that was in 1970 before I left for a year’s study in Germany or after I got back. Probably the latter. I only remember listening to him read the episode of the death of Jesus and thinking to myself, “So, what’s wrong with that?” And then he told the same story, and my experience of the Bible was transformed.
I know my first try at telling Biblical stories in Tom’s way was during the summer of probably 1972. I decided to serve a church while I was finishing my dissertation. Summertime was a time to do something different in worship. So instead of a standard sermon, I used the sermon time to tell Mark’s passion narrative, an episode per Sunday. After I told the episode, I invited responses from the congregation. I remember that, after telling the story of Jesus’ death, ULY one man sat there for the longest time with a look of great consternation on his face. Finally he blurted out, “I thought Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’” I don’t remember what I made by way of a lame reply. But I have often reflected on that response. One thing very striking about it is that it was made by a man who clearly had heard the stories of Jesus’ passion many times. Why had he not noticed before that those familiar words from the cross were not in Mark?
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In compliance with Tom Boomershine’s invitation to begin this presentation by telling a biblical story that is reflective of my approach to biblical storytelling, I want to begin by telling the first biblical story I ever learned, or at least the first one I ever learned through what has now become my primary approach to biblical study, preaching and teaching. I was fifteen years past my seminary education and significantly experienced in ministry when this happened. Like so many of my colleagues in ministry, I had studied scripture extensively. I had learned and faithfully used the tools of literary, form and redaction criticism in order to preach “the Gospel” that is to be found through that process. However, I was soon to learn that, despite how much I had studied biblical “material,” I had not yet discovered what it meant to hear and tell the biblical story...
The story I learned was Mark 10:46-52, Jesus healing of “blind Bartimaeus”. The occasion of my learning this story was the invitation of one of my parishioners to come to one of the early sessions of what would now be called a “guild” of the Network of Biblical Storytellers in Atlanta. She had attended one of the earliest Festival Gatherings offered by the Network, had become fascinated by biblical storytelling as an approach to biblical study and narrative preaching, and believed that I would find it enriching, based largely on my interest in narrative preaching. That group, led by Richard Ward who was then teaching homiletics at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, was my first experience of a biblical storytelling “community”, i.e. a group of “seekers” who discover profound insights about God, self and each other through a process of learning and “internalizing” the biblical narrative in a communal setting...
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2004 NOBS Scholars Conference: Initial Communication Between the Participants
My experience in biblical storytelling:
I have been a practicing professional storyteller since 1988, earning my living and supporting my family by means of freelance performances, workshops, classes, etc. across the U.S. (until 2000 when I remarried and my husband’s income enabled me to cut back to part-time storytelling and to enter theological school). The majority of my storytelling repertoire and experience has consisted of my original retellings of traditional/folk tales, but over the years I have also worked with personal stories, historical tales, original stories, and biblical stories.
In 1997 I participated in the ELCA National Lutheran Youth Gathering in New Orleans as one of the sixty-five Hotel Team storytellers with the 35,000 Youth Gathering participants, and was introduced to Tom Boomershine, Dennis Dewey, and biblical storytelling “a la NOBS.” Through that experience, I embraced the importance of learning our/my sacred stories from scripture by heart, and experienced the power of telling these stories and teaching them each day at morning devotions in “my” hotel ballroom, which held approximately 1,500 youth—whew!
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My Experience of Biblical Storytelling
Like many others who have come to the NOBS community, my introduction to the art of Biblical storytelling occurred when I attended a conference on the subject that featured the talents of Tom Boomershine, Dennis Dewey, and other representatives of the Network. Two events during the conference led me to become a disciple of Biblical storytelling. First, Tom and Dennis “performed” a tandem telling of the Gospel of Mark, which captivated me from the words “The good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God…’ to “…And they said nothing to anybody, because they were afraid.” I was enthralled not only because the telling brought the story and characters to life for me, but also because I found myself saying not just “I can do that,” but “I must do that!”
The second event, though not directly involving the Biblical story, was in retrospect, an equal part of the equation of my being led into Biblical storytelling and NOBS. During a reception after the telling of Mark, Tom Boomershine talked with me and listened to my excitement about the possibilities I saw in this “new” way to communicate the gospel. The “teller” became the “listener;” ergo, a relationship was formed. Storytelling in its purest form involves a relationship between the teller, the listener, and the story being told. The relationship is another way that the Holy Spirit is felt in the story telling experience. As our Celtic brothers and sisters would say it is the experience of “Christ under me, Christ over me, Christ beside me, on my left and my right.” Even if the audience is large, if a story is told from the heart, each listener will leave feeling an attachment to the teller, as well as the having shared in a wonderful event. To me, this is the work of the Spirit...
