Your Story Is Worth Sharing

The 29^th of January to the 5^th of February 2022 is National Storytelling Week in the UK. It is a way of helping school children in particular to engage with stories, and to start to understand their own life and story.

Each of us has our own story, a way of looking back over our life and making sense of how it fits together. Our story might be punctuated by important events that stand out clearly to us as a time when something changed, or we might feel that our life just rolls on as a constant with nothing particularly standing out to us. Whether we are one or the other of these, or somewhere in between, doesn’t change the fact the each of us still has a story of how we got here, now.

For us as Christians, part of this process of looking back will be about seeing where and how we have walked with God. We can see the patterns and movements of where we have felt closer to Him, and where we have felt more distant. But this perspective can also help us see that God has been a constant presence through our varied experiences.

When we look at the Bible, we can see that the use of story is one of the most significant ways that scripture communicates who God is. Nearly half of the Bible is narrative, with the rest of it split between various other genres, including letters, poetry, history books, law books and much more. This means that Story is the most common way that it conveys information, and that should tell us something about how we communicate our faith to others.

However we can often feel that when it comes to sharing the stories of our own personal faith, we don’t have the words, or the knowledge to be able to speak confidently about what we believe. We might feel that we don’t have the theological language or understanding to be able to share faith well.

At Church Army, we believe that all Christians have a story that is worth sharing, that we all have experiences of God that can intrigue and interest others. These experiences don’t need to be framed in theological language, as adding this sort of language to our story, if it isn’t part of our normal vocabulary, can result in confusion in those hearing it.

To help Christians to think about their walk with God, and to help them think about how they might share it with others, we developed Faith Pictures. This is a resource for small groups to take time and space to reflect on their life, to see how they have seen, experienced, and known God, and to support them in sharing this with others. It values the variety of our stories and doesn’t try to fit participants stories to a certain formula for sharing.

We want as many people as possible to engage with Faith Pictures, so everything you need to run the course is available completely free here. We’d love to be able to support you as you use the resource, so if you have any questions then get in touch with me at jonny.price@churcharmy.org

Stories are powerful, through sharing them we share something of ourselves, our lives, and our faith. Let’s see what God can do with the stories we share of His goodness and grace.