Narrativity

I was motivated to investigate what makes affiliates (people connected to the church but not really involved) tick. The deeper into it I've gone, the more I'm amazed and moved by the mysteriousness of people's stories. It's stuff that just doesn't show up in our social science based analyses of church trends.

A young woman has been attending my church for the last year or so. She's a classic affiliate -- active grandparents, sporadically attending mother, Roman Catholic father. She came back for the most conventional of all reasons -- she had her first baby and wanted her baptized. But as I've gotten to know her, I know there's more than that -- so much more going on in her personal story and struggles -- and I know that God's involved in moving her.

I did a funeral several years ago for a little girl who died suddenly and tragically. Parents were also classic affiliates who came to church once in a while. It's a family who has been through unimaginable suffering and I had the privilege of walking with them for quite a while.

I lost almost complete touch and wondered if they were even in town any more. Then, out of the blue, I receive a Facebook message from him. We share messages occasionally. We've been trying to make plans to go out for coffee. Last Sunday, he shows up to church with the little girl they adopted. He was back yesterday.

This stuff just can't be caught in a bottle, measured or predicted. It`s all part of the richness of individual narratives that I`m realizing more and more are at the heart of ministry -- and the heart of the Gospel.

Alan Roxburgh says that pastors should be like poets -- giving people the language to articulate what God`s doing in their lives, taking people`s questions and helping them to expand so that they can hold a reality infinitely bigger than themselves, relating personal narratives to the Great Narrative of God`s saving acts.

One more thought. I`m beginning to wonder if Christian faith is not something that you need to be older to begin to grasp. I know that goes against all of our desires for a rejuvenated church. And I`m not suggesting for a minute that the faith of younger generations is in any way deficient. But I`m telling you, there are things I`m starting to understand now at 54 that I just couldn`t have comprehended when I was 24 or 34. For one thing, I don`t know if you really begin to see the narrative pattern in your life until you`ve got a bunch of years behind you. And I`m seeing in my church the number of people for whom the Gospel is coming alive for the first time who are in their 40s and 50s. Which is also kind of changing my perspective on effective minsitry.