Barriers that we might have to telling stories
Lynne reflects on her early storying experiences:
Two things had really been holding me back from storying more widely and more often. The first was that as a woman I felt I should not share stories with men. There were many reasons for this: my church background, which is strongly against women teaching men, an assumption that my message would be ignored because in this [Muslim] culture men do not normally take advice from women, and so on.
The second barrier was that I felt embarrassed to retell a story in front of someone who had already heard it. My Westerner’s brain reasoned that it would be boring for them to hear it over again.
Long taxi drives are wonderful places to practice telling stories. The passengers are bored and the driver likes anything that helps keep him awake. So on a long and dusty trip to the capital city, over two mountain passes with perilous drop-offs littered with car corpses, I began telling a local friend I was traveling with my first few stories. I needed the practice and she desperately needed something to take her mind off how carsick she felt. The stories were rough-and ready but all the people in the jeep listened in. A week later was the return journey, with the same friend and same driver and two new passengers. One of the new passengers, a man, was intrigued by something I said, and when I said it was explained in a story, he pressed me to tell it. But the driver and my friend had heard before! And two of the listeners were men! God was about to change my assumptions and free me from lies that were stopping his word from going out.
So I told the first two stories. I have never had a car full of people so engaged. I have never had a car full of people so engaged. The taxi driver even began to help me to tell the story. Although my language was understandable, he began to throw in idioms and jokes that really made the story come alive in their language.
I think often the thing that holds us back is our own reticence rather than others unwillingness to hear stories and for that matter to talk about religion generally. I work with my husband but it is clear that sometimes I just need to tell the stories to the men that I meet as they are the ones that God places before me and the opportunity might not be there if I wait to bring my husband back! God’s word is powerful even if it comes out of a the mouth of a donkey!
With nearly all cases people are much more willing to hear stories than we are to tell them. We are usually the biggest block to stories being told – our lack of faith that the Lord can help us, our ‘faith’ (i.e. belief) that people won’t be interested… I heard a story recently where a training was done. Everyone was asked to go out on the street and tell strangers the stories just by saying, “I’ve just learned to tell a story and we’ve been asked to practice five times, will you listen to the story and help me?” The pastor in the group didn’t believe ordinary Australians would listen to stories and so he didn’t open his mouth (perhaps he sat down and had a cup of coffee). When the other story tellers returned he was shocked/surprised and embarrassed to discover that everyone else had found many people willing to hear stories and had had a fabulous experience. He resolved to make sure that he told stories next time.
Thankfully we serve the Creator who says to us, “Who made your mouth?” He is more than able to help anyone communicate if we submit to him. May you keep sharing.