What's in a story?

Lets take a look at some key points of a story.


1) The telling of the story.

"As a youth worker, particularly in the Christian circles, I tell a lot of stories to the younglings I work with, and a lot of them are about my past. It just so happens that things this week have seemed to centre around college, and looking back I may have had a laugh but I really wasted it, and almost completely wasted myself. Don't get me wrong I don't regret college, as if I did it'd just kill me as there's a lot to regret about it, but instead it makes me feel ashamed. My whole time there was my spiralling off the rails, before hitting rock bottom after getting to uni really."

There is a danger, however, in this area as I have just demonstrated, sometimes we start to re-live a story, we re-live all the feelings, and experiences, and sometimes we can get caught up in ourselves re-living that memory. Particularly in areas such as drugs, sex and alcohol abuse from our past, all things I have struggled with, we can over highlight the thrill, and seemingly 'good' points of that and seem to be condoning that behaviour which isn't our mission and warriors of hope and of light. Alternatively we can alienate the listener from ourselves as we reopen wounds and struggles and spiral off once again into loss, darkness, and ultimatley death. We may even cause our listener(s) to do the same.


2) The context of the story.

"Don't get me wrong, it's not all sob story, as the situations I talked to people here about tend to be ones that they can relate to. I look at these times now and see a story of hope and of redemption, which is something I wrote prolifically on, ironically in terms of suicide back then. I don't feel the utter despair of the situation, of how I abused myself, and of how I abused other people around me, I have the bigger picture, I have the context."

What is a story without it's context, the before and after, the current and surroundng situation, the bigger picture? We need to keep context with our stories. British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said “I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning , or destroyed it altogether”. I think that if we take away our story's context then we risk taking God out of that situation. As with my earlier scenario, the story I have been telling, if I took out the aftermath, where God saved me, then I'm just telling you how depressed, binge drinking, drug taking, and generally wild and twisted I was, and I might still well be, or I may have just made the thing up to scare you. Put in the context of God breaking into my situation when I hit rock bottom and started digging, and you get a beauty and a depth that was missing without it, you get the truth of God's mercy, the truth of God's grace, and ultimately the truth of God's love.


3) The point of the story.

"As I was talking to the lads about college, they started asking questions, about the change, about me now. Interestingly there aren't any direct questions asked about God, but I get to talk to them about that anyway as he is integral to the outcome.I don't know if they took it in, if they'll put it into practice, but I can always hope and pray for them. Thats the point, planting the seeds of God's love, grace, and mercy."


I could tell you a story, any story, because I'm a natural story-teller, I'm not saying I'm good at it, just that it's my natural instinct to tell people stories, but would there be any reason to if there wasn't a point to my telling of the story? I tend to tell stories to illustrate points I'm trying to make, taking my cue from who I think is one of the greatest story-tellers of all time, Jesus Christ himself. Jesus never told stories unless they had a point, a meaning, and today we call them parables, but none-the-less they are stories. He took the situations people were in or familiar with and told people stories to educate them at times, sometimes he told stories to show people how stupid they were being, but he always had a point. I don't think people will take our stories seriously if we don't have a point to them. Even great nonsense stories like the Alice stories Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass had meaning, they had a point to them.



I love stories, and I pray that you do too, and that in every story you get to tell and recount the you do glory and justice to God, our Dad in Heaven
God bless,
Adam.

The single serving friend.

I love travelling; I really do, especially on trains. I also love the film Fight Club. Fight Club initially comes across as an overly violent 'man' film, however, underneath the surface of this flick is an open and honest look at some oft overlooked and neglected yet very fundamental elements of what it is to be human. I don't want to go into too much detail of the whole film as I just want to look at one aspect that is raised, the single serving friend.

The urban dictionary defines a single serving friend as "A 'friend' you meet once, for example on a plane, and never see again." It is a concept in which I find something profound about human existence, a particular need, a disposition, and it is something that is even biblical in my view. In the book of Acts, in the New Testament of the Bible, we get this story of a young disciple, a follower of Jesus, named Philip, and his experience of the single serving friend. Acts 8 v26-39 has Philip walking along the road from Jerusalem to Gaza (approx 80km) where he meets the servant of the queen of Ethiopia, who had just left Jerusalem after worshiping at the temple. They spoke about Jewish scripture and about how that related to Jesus. That man asked to be baptised and become a disciple of Jesus himself. God then whisked Philip off and away to do some other stuff, and the Ethiopian man left happier than he’d ever been, he was rejoicing.

Now, I’m not saying we go out there with the express interest in winning converts, but I would love to urge us all, myself included, to be open to and aware of, when travelling, whether on foot, by train, on bus, or even when flying, other people around us. You might just make their day, it might just be that the very thing they need is a sympathetic ear, it’s always worth a try, and if it doesn’t work then there’s no loss, as you’ll most likely never see that person again.

I have so many stories I could tell you from my own life experiences on this subject but I’ve already gone on long enough. If you are interested then please feel free to drop me a line and I’ll be more than happy to talk.

My prayer for you is that you are open to other people and most important of all, that you are open to God.

Peace out, and God bless.

Adam.

In the beginning.

Just thought I'd give this blog a bit of background, the "Why am I here?" bit I guess.

Something that has bothered me quite a bit since long before I made the choice to follow Jesus, now just over 3 years ago, is that church always seemed to be just for women, little kids, and really old people. The only men I ever saw involved with church came across as plain wusses if I am to be honest, all nice and prim and proper and sitting round a campfire somewhere singing kumbaya with shirts, jumpers, and sandals, and I didn't like that.

So you may now be asking yourself the same question as my blog is asking itself,... "Why am I here?" but for entirely different reasons. The link between that little story, and my blog is that I have a passion and a heart for seeing men engaging with the living God on their terms, both men and boys, and growing up through the church with God by their side as strong Warriors of God. That is my passion.

1. I want the bible to be REAL to me as a man of God.

2. I want to feel strengthened in my birth right, God CREATED me as a man.

3. I want to SHARE this reality with other men, young or old.

4. And finally, I don't want to see the church fail another generation of men.

So somehow through having this blog, I want to be able to help myself and other people with finding their faith, and their strength, and their truth. However this project takes form, that is my goal.

I hope that made sense.
God bless,
Adam Rolan.

PS. If anything needs clarifying, or explaining, then please get in touch. I'd be more than happy to help.