Storytellers and Disciple-Makers: Stewarding Our Creativity for a Watching World
October 14, 2021 • by Katie Blackburn
I started writing publicly 11 years ago—before marriage, before children, before I had any real professional life. My friend and I had a little blog on a small corner of the internet—a place to share stories with our friends and family and think out loud about all we were learning in that season of life. I shared about the night I got engaged and a few months later about my wedding. I wrote about faith in Jesus with the confidence of a young woman yet largely unshaken by hardship. I talked about getting pregnant, about my dreams for my daughter, and how I thought motherhood would look.
From time to time I go back and read these short blog entries, and mostly, I smile at the effort. There was so much I did not know. Certainly some conclusions I made about life were a bit presumptuous, but I was telling stories, I was being honest, I was spending time on my words and an average of 36 people were reading them and truly, that felt worth it to me. Eventually my friend and I started our own individual spaces on the internet, and I kept writing. I was passionate about justice in Jesus’ name and, funnily enough, had a good amount to say about godly parenting when I was approximately one year into being one.
One morning, I got a message from an old friend from high school. She was not a believer, nor had we kept in touch after graduation. But we had a lot of memories from our years in high school together, and she was kind enough to read what I was sharing on Facebook to keep up with my life a bit. In her message, she said this: I’ve never considered myself a religious person, but your writing always resonates with me.
Stories and Discipling
In all of my writing, I never set out to “make disciples” with it. I just wanted to be a good writer; one who took her craft seriously, worked diligently to improve at it, and put true and beautiful words in the world. I enjoyed the art of imperfectly sharing my life. I had no marketing plan, no platform-growth strategy, no editors, no real idea what I was doing, other than wrestling words to the paper and hitting publish.
But what I was doing, over time and by God’s grace, and truly to my surprise, resonated with people. Not always hundreds and hundreds of people—I have yet to see a revival sparked by one of my essays. But one or two or three at a time, people who did not know Jesus were finding pieces of their life in my stories. Friends who had never stepped foot inside a church were reading about someone they knew who was working out her faith as she was talking about real life, and something was stirring in them. I cannot pretend to take credit for this—stirrings are always from the Holy Spirit. But I do know that God is a storyteller, Jesus was a storyteller, and as people created with the Imago Dei, we are storytellers too.
“God is a storyteller, Jesus was a storyteller, and as people created with the Imago Dei, we are storytellers too. ”
Author Mary Pipher wrote, “Stories are the most basic tool for connecting us to one another. [Storytelling] triggers activity on both the left and right sides of the brain. Because stories elicit whole brain/whole body responses, they are far more likely than other kinds of writing to evoke strong emotions. People attend, remember, and are transformed by stories…” (Pipher, Mary. Writing to Change the World).
We see this very thing all over the Bible, because God is the one who made stories to do just that.
When the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to rebuke David in his sinful relationship with Bathsheba, Nathan started with a story. He painted a picture for David of a rich man with more than he needed stealing a lamb from a poor man, who had nothing else, and it evoked in David an anger at the sad injustice of it (2 Sam. 12:5-6). The story brought David in. He could picture it, he could feel it.
Then Nathan says to David, “You are the man!” (2 Sam. 12:7). I’m talking about you, David. I’m talking about the injustice you are living. This story makes you feel something because it is your story.
In the gospels, when people asked Jesus who he was, what he was really doing there among them, what his motives were, what his words meant, he often answered them with a story.
When the expert in the law asked him how he could inherit eternal life, and pressed Jesus for the specifics on the answer, Jesus told him the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
When the Pharisees and scribes were complaining that Jesus “welcomes sinners and eats with them,” he told them the story of the prodigal son and the love of the father waiting for him, even after his life of sin (Luke 15).
And when the rich young man asked him about heaven and which commandments he needed to keep, Jesus told him about the upside down way of heaven with the story of the vineyard workers, how “the first will be last, and the last first” (Matt. 19:16-20:16)
When someone tells a story, others can’t help but stop and listen. A well-told story brings us in, helps us picture it, makes us feel it. This is, simply and miraculously, what God made stories to do.
“Our stories may just be the thing God uses to show the world the origin and hope of all of our lives. ”
A Common Language With the World
Right now, the world has many questions and assumptions about Christians. Social media, unclear journalism, and even the lack of discretion and discernment with our words have made it easy for those outside the Church to lump everyone inside the Church into one homogenous group. They think us all to be people who all vote and act the same, and therefore ostracize anyone outside those imaginary lines.
It’s up to faithful, humble followers of Jesus to tell a different and better story about the bride of Christ; about humanity, the struggle with sin, and the desire for connection we all share.
As much as the saints are called to live differently for God’s glory and to answer to the authority of God’s Word and will before bending to the winds of culture, we do share at least one common language with the world. It is this language that allows us to be heard and understood: story. Because what is most personal is often what is most universal, and “the story of one of us is in some measure the story of all of us.”
Today, I tell stories about my son with special needs, about our very unexpected journey with the foster care system and adoption, about my marriage and the humbling but beautiful journey motherhood has been. The storyteller I was eleven years ago would hardly believe she would have the stories—the life—I do today, and I’m sure in another decade I will feel the same. But I still tell them as honestly as I can, with the hope I have in my resurrected Savior. I pay attention to my heart, and then I “put it in the most beautiful prose I can.”
I cannot always tie a bow of finality on my stories. Most of them are still being lived, still being learned. But whether I write with humor, or with a homesickness that shows all I long for Jesus to make right, I do write with the assurance of my true home in mind. There is not an honest soul on earth who does not in some way resonate with things that make us laugh, or with this distant hum of a feeling that this life cannot be all there is. Our stories may just be the thing God uses to show the world the origin and hope of all of our lives.
So write, creative friends. Share your stories with no agenda, only honesty. Commit to making art that leaves readers pondering who Christ is in you. Write with the kind of excellence that earns the respect of a watching world. Use the very life you’ve been given as inspiration. Treat each word like it will be presented to the King himself, because someday, it will. Consider what disciples God might make by using the stories you humbly offer. The result is not up to us, but the stewardship of our gifts is.
“Let the Word by which the Creator made you fill your imagination, guide your pen, lead you from note to note until a melody is strung together like a glimmering constellation in the clear sky. Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor, too, by making worlds and works of beauty that blanket the earth like flowers… And until the Kingdom comes in its fullness, bend your will to the joyful, tearful telling of its coming. Write about that. Write about that, and never stop.” - Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark
Katie Blackburn lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Alex and their six little ones. She is a writer, teacher, and always a learner, saved by grace and running on cold brew coffee and quiet mornings at her desk. You can read more of her writing on faith, motherhood, special needs, and a good, good God at katiemblackburn.com and you can connect with her further on Instagram.
* If you‘re interested in taking one of Katie's Storytelling + Writing workshops in the future, sign up HERE to be notified when the next one opens up! *
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