Send the Storytellers

“How can they hear about Him unless someone tells them? And will anyone go and tell them without being sent?” (Romans 10:14)

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I was given my favorite childhood book the Christmas before we moved to Africa. I was ten years old, shy, and scared to move away from home. I didn’t know how to express it, but I felt different than my peers; I felt like a stranger in the world: alone.

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Then I read this children’s book—The Mysterious Benedict Society.

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Have you ever read a book (or listened to a song, watched a movie, or seen a TV show) that gave words for something you thought only you were experiencing? That’s what this book did for me: it gave me a way to express the deep needs and experiences of my soul. At ten years old, I didn’t have the words to understand why I felt the way I did—but I understood the characters and their emotions. I recognized their loneliness, and I longed for the deep bonds of friendship they learned to find. I loved their story because it helped me understand mine.

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That’s what storytelling does: it gives us a vocabulary of images, teaching us how to express and understand the world around us, our inner and outer experiences.

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That one good story changed the way I saw my life.

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But there’s a story much, much better than what is still one of my favorite books—better than the highest-grossing Hollywood film, than Spotify’s top ten songs, and the best literary works in the world. God has written a story more finely crafted than Shakespeare’s best sonnets, a story that has all the hope, redemption, belongingness, and joy we could ever long for.

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But how will they know unless we tell it?

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The dominant storytellers in our society do not believe the truth of the Gospel. Rather, the worldview inherent in our mainstream media exalts humanism, materialism, and individualism. Kid’s movies tell children to face their problems by believing in themselves; superhero sagas position godlike humans as saviors; and unavoidable barrages of advertising equate joy with purchasable goods.

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How will they hear unless we tell them?

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But storytelling for the Gospel is more than writing books about Jesus and making movies about saints. The unfortunate reputation of Christian media is preachy plots, cheesy dialogue, poor acting, and sometimes even emotional manipulation. Martin Luther allegedly said this:

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“The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”

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We need excellent storytellers in the Church. Not only do we need stories that tell the Gospel message clearly and effectively, making good use of every medium at our disposal, but we need stories that are embedded with godly values even without using God’s name. The way to reach a generation that rejects the Gospel may be less in shouting it louder (though shouting it clearer would be desirable), and more in surreptitiously letting it bubble up in our stories, in our unassuming works of art. People may not be willing to listen to a sermon or attend a church service, but almost anyone will pay attention to a good story.

C.S. Lewis talks about this in his essay “An Experiment in Criticism,” encouraging Christian artists not to ignore the standards and techniques of their craft in favor of didacticism, but to create with artistic freedom, allowing Christianity to “bubble up” in their work. A piece of art doesn’t need to explain the Gospel or theology to be ‘Christian.’ Instead, we should aim to create works that are the best in the market, not because they have the word “God” in them, but because God is in them.

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The best works of art in the market are the ones that will stick with people, just like the book that impacted ten-year-old me. People are looking for words and images—for stories—to understand and describe the world around them. We look for mirrors in art, for reflections of the vulnerable parts of our soul, the parts that are too deep to talk about. And who knows the heart better than God? As Christian storytellers, we are uniquely positioned to tell stories that touch both the depths of the human heart and the heights of divine love. We have a responsibility to be excellent, to be honest, and to be Spirit-led in our storytelling.

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Because without the storytellers, who will hear?