I love this. The idea endlessly fascinates me, reminding me why stories are so important to us, and especially to children, because they communicate a far deeper truth than simply teaching truths ever can. There is a reason that the Bible is mostly story: it’s full of truth that only stories can hope to present.
This is something that feels very contemporary in children’s ministry but as Alister McGrath points out, C. S. Lewis was, way ahead of us on this. He caught the idea that there was something better than what Alister calls the ‘conventional wisdom’ of showing Christianity is true and then persuading them it was relevant. Instead Lewis takes children to a world that they really wish could exist, before they are shown that it really does.
But that’s the wonder of it; it’s a story that is not true (there is no talking Beaver in the real world) but is actually more than true. Children’s ministry doyen Jerome Berryman talks a lot about stories being gifts. In fact, in Godly Play, the parables are packages in golden boxes to help make this point. Alister points at one of the wonderful things about these gifts: they connect us to a wider story; we can enter into them and be changed by them. They are truly amazing gifts and ones that we give out most Sundays, possibly without truly realising the significance of what we are doing.
I guess your group is like mine; every week we centre around a story and sometimes you wonder why. On and on we go, week after week, story after story. Hopefully Alister’s feature shows us why we do his and why it’s so important. There is no greater gift I can give a child than a story and the tools to help children unpack it for themselves. When we do that we are doing so much more than increasing Bible literacy; we are giving gifts that will sustain those children for the rest of their lives. Because that’s the other way these stories are more than true; not only do they speak into their lives now, as children in the year 2016, they have the power to speak in 2066, when they have their own children and everything about their lives will have changed. Still, decades later, those stories will still be there for them, as powerful then as they are for them now.
