Great Response from a Youth Leader
by Michael Novelli | August 18 2009 11:27 AM
I recently met a youth leader named Jeremy at a workshop I was leading in Ohio. I was really encouraged to hear how he has been using Bible Storying in his context. Here is an excerpt from an email he sent me last week. BE ENCOURAGED!!"I just wanted to take a moment and let you know of the impact storying has had on my life and also the ministry I am leading. I went to a workshop back in the spring where Mike you lead a group of us youth leaders in the storying journey in Greenville, Ohio. I had just finished reading the book and was excited to learn from the "pro" on how to make the Bible come alive and eager to learn more about this way of doing ministry. After taking the next couple of months researching, praying, thinking, and reading about storying I decided this was something our youth ministry would do come fall. This would give me enough time to prepare things in advance and also give me a time to "test run" things at a week of camp I was going to be leading.
For the week of camp we did storying 13 times to cover major stories from Genesis through Revelation. Each time it was amazing as students were focused and engaged for our whole time together. Sometimes we would go for about 90 minutes as the discussion was rich and the implications for our lives just kept pouring out with each new story. It was also neat to see how they could make the connections from one story to the next so easily. We also drew our own symbols and images of each story which made things come to life some more. Each day the students were excited about what the next story would be and how it would connect with the others. One student said after camp "For the first time the old boring Bible stories came to life and I experience God in a new way. I now see how interesting each story is and how they are connected with each other." Truly a testimony to the power of storying in a group. One of my students who typically does not follow very well loved the experience so much she can't wait for us to start it in our youth group. In fact, she is disappointed we are starting things right away. Never in my 9 years of ministry has this happened, when a student was eager to start our teaching times."
– Jeremy, Youth Leader from Hamilton, OH
