Story As Theological Form
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Story as Theological Form Adam Navis Submitted to the faculty of Western Theological Seminary in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Ministry Holland, MI 2016 WESTERN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY HOLLAND, MI D.MIN. PROJECT Title of Project: Story as Theological Form Author: ADAM NAVIS Project Committee: ______________________________ ____________ Dr. Carol Bechtel Date ______________________________ ____________ Dr. Kyle J.A. Small Date Internal Reader: Dr. David Stubbs External Reader: Dr. Jennifer Holberg ii Abstract I have always been more moved—and to more lasting effect—by stories than by the sub-genres of non-fiction, including sermons, biblical commentary, philosophical argument, or self-help. I had this gut feeling that Christians should take stories more seriously, but I couldn’t articulate to my satisfaction why I felt this way. I wanted to know why stories capture our imagination. What does it mean to call a story a Christian story? And perhaps most importantly, how can we, as individuals and the Church, learn to tell better stories? I began by studying the writing process. I compared popular Christian writers with students and faculty at Western Theological Seminary in order to understand the habits, attitudes, and beliefs of good Christian writers. Then I sought a way to develop these characteristics in other people. I did this by marrying the writing pedagogy of Peter Elbow with traditional Christian spiritual disciplines to create an explicitly Christian writing process. Only then did I move on to address the rhetorical, psychological, social, and theological aspects (and advantages) of the story form. Yet the final, most important, and most vulnerable step was to put it all into practice: to write a story about what it means to be a Christian and a writer. This was not secondary or merely illustrative, but the inevitable conclusion of my work. After all, it would be ironic and hypocritical to celebrate the form of the story and then neglect to use its power. iii Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................iii Introduction: A Storytelling Renaissance ..............................................................................4 Chapter 1: Why Some Christians aren’t Embracing Storytelling ..........................................10 Chapter 2: What is a Good Christian Writer? ........................................................................21 Writers are People .............................................................................................................25 Good Writers are Good Readers .......................................................................................28 Good Writers are Craft Writers .........................................................................................31 Good Writers Embrace Vulnerability ...............................................................................35 Good Writers are Integrated Writers .................................................................................41 Good Writers are Pastoral Writers ....................................................................................45 What about the Prophetic Voice? .....................................................................................49 Chapter 3: Is There a Christian Writing Process? ..................................................................52 Embodiment and Incarnation ............................................................................................54 Rest and Sabbath ...............................................................................................................59 Read Books and Indwell Scripture ...................................................................................62 Community and the Church ..............................................................................................66 Inspiration and Submission to the Holy Spirit ..................................................................72 Do the Work and Accept the Call .....................................................................................75 The Lordship of Christ ......................................................................................................78 Chapter 4: Why The Church Should Care about Stories .......................................................84 The Qualities of the Story Form .......................................................................................87 iv Setting ..........................................................................................................................90 Character and Dialogue ................................................................................................93 Point of View ...............................................................................................................95 The Path to Transformation .........................................................................................97 The Power of the Story Form ............................................................................................99 The Rhetorical Benefits ...............................................................................................99 The Personal Benefits ..................................................................................................100 The Evocation of Emotions .........................................................................................101 Stories Build Empathy .................................................................................................102 Stories Build Community ............................................................................................105 Stories Cross Boundaries .............................................................................................107 The Theology of the Story Form ......................................................................................109 What is a Good Christian Story? ......................................................................................112 Chapter 5: Conclusion ............................................................................................................119 Chapter 6: Searching for E, a novella ....................................................................................122 Appendix A: Research Details ...............................................................................................184 Appendix B: Reflections on the Writing Process ..................................................................187 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................192 v Introduction: A Storytelling Renaissance If you were looking for a new podcast in the summer of 2014, you probably heard about Serial. The series told the story of Syed Adnan, who was convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee while they were both still in high school. It was such a phenomena that you didn’t need to go to iTunes’ “most popular” podcast list to find it. You could just as easily hear about it on Facebook, Twitter, or directly from a zealous friend. What set Serial apart from other story-based programs was that the producers wanted to attempt long-form storytelling. They wanted to serialize a single story. This was counter to perceived wisdom: listeners wouldn’t (or couldn’t) pay attention to something so demanding. Where a radio show like This American Life (which perennially sits atop the “most popular” list and which supported Serial) might tell three to five stories around a single theme each week, Serial wanted to test if it was possible to do the opposite: to tell a single story spread out over twelve weeks. One strength of Serial was Sarah Koening, the host and co-executive producer. She was an experienced and skilled journalist, having worked for The New York Times, ABC News, and as a producer on This American Life. But while her experience accounts for the quality of the show, it doesn’t account for its unprecedented popularity. Koening hoped that the twelve episode run might generate 300,000 downloads, but by December 4 of 2014, Serial had been downloaded over 78 million times.1 It would also go on to win a 2014 Peabody Award.2 Could anyone have predicted Serial’s success? Well, if you knew where to look, there were hints that people were ready for a show like Serial. For example, millions of people already listened to storytelling-based radio shows like The Moth Radio Hour, Snap Judgment, Story Corp and the aforementioned This American Life, so storytelling was alive and well on the radio. But not only on the radio was storytelling going through a bit of a revival. It was happening all across popular culture. For instance, television has been moving away from sitcoms, a form that has dominated the last thirty years, and toward long-arch narrative shows like Lost, The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica, Breaking Bad, and Parenthood.3 On-demand services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, have given producers room to take risks with form and subject matter. Shows like Orange is the New Black, Transparent, or Girls might have been canceled on traditional channels, if they had even been given the green light. Current television programming is so good at creating intriguing and complex characters and inserting them into emotionally fraught situations that John