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    Re-Storying Your Faith
    Re-Storying Your Faith
    Re-Storying Your Faith
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    Re-Storying Your Faith

    By Suzanne M. Coyle

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    About this ebook

    Re-Storying Your Faith has caught our culture’s imagination from nouveau experiences of spirituality through channeling and meditation to traditional spiritual practices of personal devotions, scripture reading, and prayer. Building on Christian spirituality, this spiritual practice of re-storying our faith offers people an everyday experience of discovering multiple faith stories to give meaning to their spiritual journey. Built into this process is a way of discovering individual uniqueness as well as sharing discovered stories in faith communities, whether it is a Sunday school class or a group of like-minded friends.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Hunt Publishing
    Release dateNov 29, 2013
    ISBN9781782792307
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      Book preview

      Re-Storying Your Faith - Suzanne M. Coyle

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      Preface

      Stories inhabit our person and our relationships. Multiple stories are sometimes confusing but seldom boring. For thousands of years, human beings have told stories, shared stories, and passed those stories on to succeeding generations. Stories give our lives meaning.

      The Hebrews transmitted their faith through oral stories. So, did the early Christians. At times, we contemporary Christians share our spiritual stories with each other. Yet, increasingly, we find fewer opportunities to reflect upon our spiritual stories and infuse them with new meanings for our faith.

      The increase of information in the computer can make stories seem ephemeral. Updated stories appear on the Internet with frequency. Yet, our spiritual stories are often linked to the past. We hold on to those sacred stories that once had meaning; we fear uncovering new stories, even when they could give our faith new vibrancy.

      This book invites you to explore those spiritual experiences of your life that give your faith meaning. It also invites you to have the courage to explore new stories and new meanings. We will discover the connection of narrative practice and liberation theologies in a spiritual practice of storytelling with new meaning through a re-storying process.

      Stories have also had meaning for me. I grew up in a home with a small family—me, my mother, my father, and my maternal grandmother. Yet, many people lived there with us shared through the rich stories of family heritage, the Bible, and everyday life at the dinner table.

      So, I’m a natural born storyteller. However, I’m not a contemplative person. I love action, and have often thought that spiritual practice would elude me. So, I share with you my journey of using storying, in hopes that storytelling as a spiritual practice might embrace you and enrich your spirits.

      I thank my husband, Peter, and son, Joel, for their encouragement; my students at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis for their inspiration; participants in my storytelling as spiritual practice groups in the Indiana congregations of First Baptist Church of Indianapolis, Bethel Presbyterian Church, Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, and First Presbyterian church of Lewisville for their trust; teacher and colleague Chris Dolman of the Teaching Faculty at the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide, Australia for offering comments; Timothy Staveteig and Trevor Greenfield for their editorial wisdom and patience; and the John Hunt Publishing editorial and production staff for their constancy.

      Chapter 1

      Many Stories

      Allison wearily laid down her briefcase on the kitchen counter. She had recently been promoted to manager for the real estate office where she had worked for five years. At the time of the promotion, this seemed a good thing. She received a sizable increase in salary. Together with her husband Jason’s salary as a high school teacher, they would feel less financial pressure, even though their two children always had some need for extra money with soccer and music lessons.

      But, as Allison began to make dinner, she wondered whether the promotion was indeed a good thing. Did she want to spend more time away from home? Could she keep up with everything? She then remembered her volunteering to chair the personnel committee at church. Allison suddenly felt very tired.

      A month before she had attended a women’s retreat. While there, she felt renewed and encouraged to be more active in her church. Jesus again felt real and powerful in her life in a way she could not explain. She felt that she could do anything. Now she felt defeated. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She heard Jason coming through the door.

      Perhaps you identify with Allison. Added responsibilities in life conflict with what you could do to express your faith. Then an opportunity comes along to develop your spiritual life. You take the risk. But things collapse as you try to find a place where your spiritual and everyday lives meet and live well together. This book is about working through such spiritual crumples to re-story your faith at this deeper level.

      The tools we use are familiar. Most people of faith are encouraged in their everyday lives through various spiritual practices. Attendance at worship, Bible study, prayer and devotion, and Christian service are all spiritual practices that serve to deepen faith. Through church attendance, Christians develop relationships with other Christians as they encounter God through worship and study. Bible study opens God’s word as it was revealed to believers in the past. Through the Holy Spirit, believers use the Bible as a guide to direct their lives in the present and future. Prayer and devotion opens spiritual paths to experience God’s presence in more introspective ways. Christian service allows Christians to see the world through others’ eyes and experience Christ through the person they least expect.

      Re-storying as Spiritual Practice

      These spiritual practices just identified are understood as those things that Christians do to live out their Christian lives and experience closer relationships with God and other believers. Some people by dint of their personalities are quieter and more reflective. They may find their Christian faith deepened more through quiet devotion than service in the soup kitchen. Other Christians who are invested in making a difference in the marketplace may experience God more when hammering a nail for a person’s new home than a time of quiet prayer.

      Identifying and telling stories of faith are ways that all Christians can deepen their faith whether they are more contemplative or action-oriented. Centuries of Christians have witnessed to each other and to non-believers by sharing their stories of faith.

      Despite the impact of telling stories of faith, the practice is not usually recognized as a spiritual practice like prayer or Bible study. Yet, it is a practice that that has long been a part of Christian faith. Early believers shared their faith through stories that told of their spiritual journey as they joined in worship. Some present day denominations have opportunities for believers to share testimonies. In these testimonies, people share experiences of how their personal relationship with Christ has changed their lives and enables them to stand up to everyday life challenges. Other denominations are more likely to stress an ongoing spiritual growth characterized by a flow of events that gradually form a faith story and that informs the believer’s Christian life. These different perspectives on faith stories are good examples of how Christians of different faith communities have used stories in their spiritual lives while they have not been formally recognized as a Christian spiritual practice.

      Current trends in spiritual life focus on spiritual practices. Some spiritual practices are very intentional and not merely accidental; these add to the richness of a believer’s life. Simply put, a spiritual practice is what Christians do as being Christian (Dykstra 2010). At the same time, a spiritual practice becomes more than ‘only’ what Christians do. Spiritual practices are those activities that have a devotional nature to them and, in turn, help develop our faith (Bass 2010).

      Development of our faith needs to focus not only on experiencing the transcendence of God but also on connecting what we do as Christians to our everyday lives. The result is a grounding of everyday life that adds to the capacity of serving God. Recent trends in Christian literature emphasize everyday life—such as shopping, eating, working—to be spiritual practices. (See Fortress Press’ Christian Explorations of Daily Living and Pilgrim Press’ Faith Practices.)

      While such everyday activities can now be framed as spiritual practice, it becomes a bit puzzling that storytelling is not identified as a spiritual practice. Stories have always been an important

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