Book Review: “Basic Bible Storying” by J.O. Terry
Christian non-fiction is fairly diverse. At one end I call Inspirational/Devotional (not completely sure what publishers call them). These are books that have some generally positive Christian theme (perhaps on how to pray, or “have victory,” or create a good Christian marriage. They have some Bible verses, pleasant illustrative stories and Christian platitudes. If I sound negative about these books— well I am, but only because they are little interest to me, not because they are bad. They are popular because they are readable, and promise (correctly or incorrectly) to fix some broken area of a Christian’s life. The other end are very academic, theologically dense, and generally impractical works. These books are not so easy to find, and often for good reason. In between are books that seek to bridge the gap a bit, taking theology and research seriously, while still seeking to be applicable.
This, I think is the “sweet spot” I find “Basic Bible Storying,” by J.O. Terry. In fact, one of the things I really like about the book is that the title is a bit, in my opinion, misleading. To me the title suggests something rather formulaic— perhaps a “no assembly required,” ready to use story system for missionaries or ministers, or a very general look at how good it is to use stories in ministry. This is decidedly not what the book is. It is basic more in the sense that it seeks to be somewhat comprehensive– looking at the full gamut of the use of storying in its many iterations across a wide range of fields. However, I did not feel that its breadth worked much against its depth.
One reason it achieved this is that it provided good theological or practical complexity while also helping with more cut-and-paste answers for those who need them. For example, Terry makes a point that storying should be crafted to the situation— the worldview and context in which the storying is done, the time and place constraints of the storyteller, the type of learners, and the primary purpose for telling the stories. In this, he is going against the pre-packaged story sets, as well as the (in my view self-servingly lazy) view of some Christian storytellers that Bible stories are “supra-cultural” and so do not need to be contextualized for a specific audience. Despite this, however, he also gives specific information on gaining access to some of these story resources. He would prefer, it seems to me, that people would do the process of storymaking on their own, but understands that everyone needs a helping hand at times.
The book addresses the process of holding storying sessions (pre-story, story, and post-story) along with a lot of personal stories to illustrate the opportunities and struggles of this form of ministry. The book has a lot of “best practices” and “lessons learned” but built on a foundation of theology and missiology. That does make this book a bit unusual.
Terry is a retired missionary and the book is clearly missiological in tone and target. Nevertheless, he does make clear that a lot of the principles in the book work in many settings— including literate societies. While I agree that a missionary would gain more from the book than others, the principles of storytelling and narrative preaching are valuable for all ministers. Stories are not just for children any more— and never were.
