I Love this World

by Michael Novelli   |  August 20 2008    11:55 PM

The Bible is a wikistory – a mashup of stories

by Michael Novelli   |  August 18 2008    11:15 PM

It’d be nice if the Bible read like a novel from cover to cover. But it’s not a novel. It’s a series of books that have been grouped together—and many of them are out of chronological order.


In technological terminology, a mashup is a Web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. The Bible is like this—a mashup of different writings from different authors inspired to tell the unified Story of God and his love for people.


In a recent talk, author Scot McKnight suggested we look at the Bible as a “Wikistory,” in which there is “ongoing reworking of the biblical story by new authors who each tell the story in their own way.” McKnight continued, “None [of the books of the Bible] is exhaustive, comprehensive or absolute...they are different stories of THE Story. We don’t have to harmonize them or try to reconcile them. They’re just doing their own versions of the Story, and each has a place in the larger picture.”


Let’s face it—the Bible is often difficult to read and to teach. We’ve got our work cut out for us if we wish to give our students a sense of its overarching story. That’s why storying is the best way I’ve found to give people, young and old alike, a Bible overview with context to all future Bible learning.


(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, Shaped by the Story)

Storying Training in Milwaukee

by Floodlight   |  August 06 2008    02:43 PM

Next week (Aug. 16th) I will be leading a storying workshop for Southbrook Church. This will be my first workshop that is primarily with children’s ministry leaders. Since I am not an expert in ministry to children, I invited one – my friend Amy Dolan from LemonLime Kids! I am really excited to be co-leading with Amy. Youth ministry workers and pastors from the area will also be a part of the day-long event. If you are interested in joining us, let me know!

creating and healing

by Michael Novelli   |  July 16 2008    11:21 PM

“Art is love creating the new world and justice is love rolling up its sleeves to heal the old one”
– N.T. Wright

Become an Experience Architect

by Michael Novelli   |  June 18 2008    11:51 PM

One of the defining words for this digital era is interactive. We’re becoming accustomed to being able to access and create our own media at a moment’s notice. We desire to contribute to our own learning and entertainment like we would any conversation. We now yearn to be a part of shared experience.

This shift in values has significant implications for the way we approach education. Places where we’ve traditionally accessed information—schools, libraries, and museums—have identified this shift and moved to making their learning opportunities more interactive. There is a new set of standards for how we teach others. We are moving away from one-dimensional education with the teachers being the experts who hold the key to information.

Students already have instant access to most information. They’re becoming accustomed to being able to change, interact, and create while they learn.

We teachers and leaders then become guides to help students explore information and use it in the right context. This requires a new vision for our roles as educators. We become “experience architects,” creating environments that help participants dive deeper and explore further into the things of God. This new role requires a significant investment of energy into creativity.

Bible Storying helps us to explore our new roles as experience architects. The storying process encourages us to experiment with all kinds of creative exercises that will foster learning and formation in our students.
(Excepted from my forthcoming book, Shaped by the Story)

Donald Miller on Learning to Speak in Stories

by Michael Novelli   |  May 06 2008    11:30 PM

Excerpt from the book Searching for God Knows What:


“It strikes me, even as I type this, how distant and far our formulaic methodology is from the artful, narrative sort of methodology used to explain God in Scripture. It makes you wonder whether we can even get to the truth of our theology unless it is presented in the sort of methodology Scripture uses.


It makes you wonder if all our time spent making lists would be better spent painting or writing or singing or learning to speak stories. Sometimes I feel as though the church has a kind of pity for Scripture, always having to come behind it and explain everything, put everything into actionable steps, acronyms and hidden secrets, as though the original writers, and for that matter the Holy Spirit who worked in the lives of the original writers, were a bunch of illiterate hillbillies. I don’t think they were illiterate hillbillies, and I think the methodology God used to explain His truth is quite superior.


What I mean by this is I feel my life is a story, more than a list; I feel this blood slipping through my veins and these chemicals in my brain telling me I am hungry or lonely, sad or angry, in love or despondent. And I don’t feel that a list could ever explain the complexity of all this beauty, all this sun and moon, this smell of coming rain, the beautiful mysteries of women, or the truck-like complexity of men.


It seems nearly heresy to explain the gospel of Jesus, this message an infinitely complex God has delivered to an infinitely complex humanity, in bullet points. How amazing it is that Christ would explain that to be His followers we must eat His flesh and drink His blood, and that He is the Bridegroom and we are the bride, and that we will be unified with Him in His death, and that we will live forever with Him in glory.”