Using storytelling on a large university campus
The practice of storytelling means using your own words to faithfully and accurately represent a Bible story, using voice, actions and emotions to engage your audience. Churches across Sydney are learning about storytelling from Christine Dillon, author of Telling the Gospel Through Story. Christine teaches the storytelling method she has successfully used in Asia. During my studies at Sydney Missionary and Bible College (SMBC) she has inspired me to share the storytelling method with the EU’s students and staff.
Telling Bible stories isn’t rocket science, so why does it interest us so much? Maybe it’s because, according to SMBC lecturer Sam Chan, four out of five of Australians prefer to learn through concrete examples, like stories. People love stories and the Bible is full of them.
In semester two, eight students and I learned a seven Bible story set that tells the story of salvation from creation to Jesus’ birth. The students practiced by sharing their stories with people passing by, and were surprised by how willing people were to listen, give feedback and share their thoughts. We also gathered our friends in a busy thoroughfare to share the whole seven stories, summarising the whole Old Testament in 43 minutes!
While there are clear benefits for the listener, what about the storyteller? It has forced me to think deeply about why I’m telling the story and what it means. Why does God give us this strange story?! It’s also helped me to think hard about my audience, what ideas they might not understand and how to best present it to them.
These first experiences with storytelling have formed an initial step in thinking about the possible use of storytelling in evangelism and teaching. Pray that this practice might enable us to more effectively share the story of God’s salvation with Sydney Uni campus.
Submitted by Karen Sowden, Senior Staffworker at Sydney Uni. Used with permission.
KS added some notes in her personal email to me:
It started as an experimental year, and I ran a storytelling course with the students to help keep me motivated and learning. We learned your Old Testament story set and did up until Christmas (Overview Bible Set). We learned the first few together and then everyone was given a story. We tried to use some stories in walk up evangelism and then decided to do a public performance to motivate us all to learn the stories. The students invited friends along to hear. They also brought along one prop for each story to symbolise the story. The students were very keen and motivated. I learned a lot from this experience and it has launched us into another phase.
We are now trialing new sets of stories. We’ll spend two weeks on each story, one learning it and one discussing it. We wanted to slow the pace down, so people can digest and share their stories.
