Storytelling or Telling the Story?

The other day someone asked me why I wanted to be a pastor. I told him that the reason was simple; I just had problems sitting still for an hour in church and there was only one position that allowed me to still be in worship and walking around. It's not that I'm bored; it's just that my mind can only absorb what my seat can endure.

But even if I was bored to tears I wouldn't be alone -- even some every-Sunday people I've talked to admit that they're bored to tears in church, but feel like they 'should' be there.

I'm very weary of the person-on-the-street interviews that pose the question: why don't you go to church? I think there's a limited script of answers that people choose from:
It's boring; it's not relevant; it's at a bad time; or my all-time tooth grinder I'm not religious - I'm spiritual.

Combining those two charges, when I encounter other Pastors who want to change the way their church worships to attract more people -- most often using the market-savvy "who's our customer and what do they want?" mentality -- I want to bang my head against a wall.

Because, quite frankly, I think that convincing ourselves that contemporary or rock-music worship is more 'entertaining' for people only achieves two things:
1. it really convinces us that people who comes to our churches are idiots who sway whichever way the wind blows, and;
2. it enables worship leaders and planners to find cop-out substitutes for actually working at incorporating people's experiences and lives -- their own stories -- into liturgical worship.

Don't think for a minute that I don't like contemporary styles of worship, or CCM. But I do believe that both the style of worship and the music are better suited to conveying a different message. I do think that liturgical worship -- the great gift of the people -- is best suited to the message brought by the Lutheran church (or Anglican, or RC, or whichever.) We've got 500 years of practice; it we probably shouldn't be struggling to make it work now.

So, as Herbert Anderson points out in Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals: Weaving Together the Human and the Divine, perhaps the biggest problem with Sunday Eucharist is "not that it is poor theatre, but that it is poor human storytelling and inadequate divine storytelling."

And maybe that's why contemporary Christian rock worship music is popular. If someone made the argument, I could buy the idea that from it's very roots, rock music is more about narrative and storytelling than anything else. That would be why people relate to it. It may be trite and annoying to listen to endless songs about teen angst, but one can't deny that those songs do actually convey a story, though it may be one that is cliched and shallow. CCW songs may only seldom get out of First Article theology; but they convey said theology relatively easily.

But should not then liturgy, when the very word actually means 'the work of the people', be the foundation for telling the "Story" -- the ultimate narrative combining both the stories of the assembled people of God and also the grander divine narrative -- and in making those stories alive in our own context?

Anderson includes a little story:
Once there was a church where they couldn't find the Bible one Sunday.
The Minister asked if anyone had good news from the Lord.
No one admitted having any, so they all started leaving.
One man said his wife had just had a baby this morning.
The people decided this wasn't a word from the Lord and they went home.
The man stayed for a whole hour. He was sure this was good news from the Lord.

Of course, the parable paints a picture of empty ritual; that is, ritual without story. This is true of many people's recollections of Sunday worship growing up, bored out of one's skull and wishing it would end quickly. This is really ironic, because Christian worship was birthed in story, pushed out into the world by the endless retelling of the words of a man paradoxically dying on a cross for the healing of the world.

So if ritual empty of story is empty of meaning, why then do we continually persist to try to ascribe story empty of ritual as whole and holy? As one young congregand remarked to me about the recent national youth gathering (and I'm not criticizing said gathering here, folks) "the best thing about it was, like, being in a mosh pit and still worshiping God."

Now I'm not terribly familiar with NYG's. But I worked as a bouncer during my undergrad, and I am familiar with mosh pits. I admit I am puzzled as to how, indeed, one would worship God in a mosh pit, but I accept her observation as a real and valid experience for her. But I wonder: was the mosh pit itself a place of worship for God; was it her perception of her actions as partaking in worship of some form; or does the entertainment value of the storytelling through music promote a religious experience for her?

Early in my undergraduate degree, I theorized (and I've never figured out if it's even a valid hypothesis) that religion was made 'organized' solely by the presence of ritual in it's tradition -- how the Story (the grand narrative of any and all religious traditions) was told in community, and thus in turn how the community used and articulated that story into their own individual lives. So, then, ritual is empty in the absence of both story and community. But if story and ritual come together in the absence of community, what then? Or if story and community come together in the absence of ritual? The former is empty religion, and the latter is entertainment. Or, in different terms, entertainment is storytelling, empty religion is lecture, and organized religion is Telling the Story.

(So, if someone tells you they don't believe in organized religion -- that they feel closer to God on a mountaintop, a mosh pit, what have you -- they're probably trying to convey that they don't like religious organizations, but don't want to sound hoity-toity or arrogant.)

Storytelling is fine and good -- but the entertainment of storytelling often lies in its mythic primogeniture -- it's unbelievableness that oddly enough makes the story believable. Such stories exist on their own outside of any context, which is why fairy tales always seem so stupid when 'updated' into modern forms. Storytelling is entertaining, I think, because it allows one to become immersed in a story without involving one's life.

I think that Telling the Story, on the other hand, demands that those listening risk something of themselves in their listening. To open themselves, their lives, and their experiences to both the voyeuristic and at the same time cherished attention of a community gathered and bonded by shared faith. In effect, to be active participants in the work of the people, in the community of believers cared for and loved by God, brought together in the salvation found through Jesus Christ.

Because in storytelling we hear the story, but when if we are invited to be part of the Telling of the Story it becomes our own, a part of our identity, a ritual that places our lives and experiences in the category of "things loved by God."