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Spiritual formation and imagination:
Q & A with Sarah Arthur

Several years ago, Sarah Arthur confronted a crisis in her life. She was worn out as a youth minister. “I loved kids—loved nothing more than to see them get excited about the adventure of faith—but I preferred books to people,” she admits in her new book The God-Hungry Imagination: The Art of Storytelling for Postmodern Youth Ministry (Upper Room).

“I am not proud of this preference; it’s the dark side of the contemplative life,” she writes. “Books are much more manageable than teenagers. They don’t forget their permission slips. They don’t disappear right when you think things are going well. They don’t cry in your office, yell at you in the parking lot, or talk about you behind your back.”

Literature was her passion, but youth ministry was her calling. “My biggest conundrum was how to blend a love of story with a vocation that required organizing paintball events for vanloads of twelve-year-old boys,” she confesses. “Reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov didn’t seem like exactly the best way to prepare for junior high youth group on Sunday night. Or was it?”

In the following interview, Sarah Arthur explains some of her ideas regarding story-telling, youth ministry, and imagination to Good News editor Steve Beard.

Good News: How does the human imagination relate to our spiritual formation as Christians?

Sarah Arthur: To state it plainly, I believe we cannot be spiritually formed without the human imagination. Without the faculty of imagination weaving together what is seen and unseen, we cannot engage a biblical world that is distant in time and setting from our own; we cannot engage an invisible God who speaks through prophets and poets, dreamers and seers; we cannot empathize with the stranger or see Christ in one another; we cannot participate in prayer (lifting up others who may not be in our midst, envisioning their healing); we cannot engage in thanksgiving (thanking God involves remembering what God has done for us, and memory is a function of imagination); and so on.

Sure, there are plenty of ways the imagination can deform us. We can become enamored of the wrong stories, worship “images” or idols of popular culture, live so much in our imagination that we’re unable to engage the material world. But this is the flipside of what the imagination was given to us for. This is a classic example of evil becoming parasitic on the good. I believe the imagination is one of the ways we are made in the image of God, an aspect of the human intellect, like reason; and thus it is a way of knowing that the Holy Spirit can use to form us in the image of Christ.

How does storytelling help reach the next generation of believers?

I am convinced that storytelling doesn’t merely help us reach the next generation—as if it’s one of many methods for passing on information, or a kind of embellishment to the real “point” of what we’re trying to get across. Rather, the story is the point. The story of faith is what we’re trying to live. So storytelling is how we reach the next generation. And I don’t just mean discursive “telling” (though preaching and teaching are vital): I mean living the story of faith in all its richness and complexity, within the worshipping community, through its various practices. “Telling” in this sense is both words and actions. It’s a way of life that embodies a “narratable world” such that our children and youth want to step inside that world, make their home in it, speak its native language, conform their life to its plot.

What is the “narratable world”?

I’m borrowing the phrase “narratable world” from scholars like Hans Frei and Robert Jenson, who express concern that we no longer see the Bible as story or the world as a place that makes narrative sense (with a coherent beginning, middle, and end). Modernity reduced the biblical texts to mere facts or mere allegories (Frei), while postmodernity claims there is no overarching story, or metanarrative, by which people can make sense of their lives (Jenson).

So the church is a weird entity. It claims there is more going on in Scripture than mere historical facts (otherwise why maintain four separate gospels? why not just blend them all together into one long journalistic report?). And it also claims there’s more going on in Scripture than mere allegory (i.e., Jesus is not code for “every man,” like the character of Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress; rather, Jesus is himself, a unique being who lived in a particular time, in a particular place). And meanwhile the church holds that the story of this man is a metanarrative, which shapes the pattern of people’s lives. The church itself is a “narratable world,” which embodies the biblical story of Jesus in its worship and practices, its grammar and creeds.

Or, that’s what it’s supposed to be, anyway. When our youth remain unconvinced that the church is compelling, we need to ask ourselves if we’re still telling the right story, much less any story at all. We need to ask if our local church is a narratable world worth engaging.

What does it mean for the youth pastor to become a bard?

I think the impulse is for youth pastors to become entertainers. The bigger the subwoofers, the larger and happier the audience. But in the meantime we have this lurking suspicion that such an approach may not be “spiritual” enough, so we transfer our guilt onto the kids by giving an altar call saying they need to (re)commit their lives to Jesus, or pray every day, or help the poor, etc. But telling them what they need is not the same as forming them to be Christian disciples.

Forming disciples is like forming children within a particular cultural heritage. This is where the metaphor of the bard comes in. A bard is not merely an entertainer, nor is he or she merely one who passes on information, like a telephone operator. Bards are the ones called forth at a banquet to sit by the fire and share the narratives of the community in a compelling and memorable way. Bards are the ones who preserve and pass on (and sometimes challenge) the cultural heritage of the community through story and song. They never simply entertain or simply inform. They engage the imagination in order to weave a narratable world that holds meaning for the hearers, which reminds them of who they are and how they are called to live.

This is what Jesus did. This is how the first disciples were formed. Someone asked, “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus said, “Once there was a man…”

What can the contemporary church learn from storytellers such as J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, and George McDonald?

I hold up these authors as examples of bard-dom, if that’s a word. They were bards. They knew the art of storytelling (in the western-Anglo tradition). And they didn’t just tell stories for the fun of it, although we can’t help taking delight in their delight in storytelling. They were Christians whose imaginations were rich enough to engage the imaginations of others in such a way that the story of faith became compelling again.

Even for Tolkien—who didn’t set out to tell a “Christian” story in The Lord of the Rings, much less to proselytize—storytelling was an act of worship. God gave him the gift of imagination, of invention, and Tolkien used it. The result is that many of his readers, Christian and non-Christian alike, are left with a kind of ache—an ache for beauty, for home, for joy in the midst of great suffering. He didn’t have to be overt. The richness of meaning was beneath the surface, and he respected his readers enough to let them explore it on their own.

And meanwhile these authors were brilliant thinkers. If a cerebrally rational scholar like Sayers or Lewis could also be a Christian, doesn’t that say something about both the richness of the Christian story and the importance of educating ourselves in order to tell it well?

 

 

Worth Reading

If your church has a ministry focus to reach those under 45-years-old, there are a few must-read books. First, Dan Kimball’s new book They Like Jesus But Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations (Zondervan) masterfully deals head-on with common questions from people in his community: Isn’t the church just organized religion that is politically motivated? Is the church homophobic? Does it take the entire Bible literally? Does the church repress women? Is it judgmental and negative? Does it arrogantly think all other religions are wrong? Kimball doesn’t lecture. Instead, he engages his neighbors’ questions and deals with these issues with great spiritual wisdom.

Second, make sure to get David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons’ book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity…And Why It Matters (Baker). Working with Fermi Project and The Barna Group, this book details the study of how 16- to 29-year-olds perceive Christianity, Christians, and the Church. The results are haunting. The book is bolstered by insights from respected Christian leaders on how the Church can address the negative perceptions and make a positive contribution to our contemporary culture.

Third, in order to get a better grasp on how younger generations grapple with sensitive issues, be sure to read through Donna Freitas’s new book Sex & the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and religion on America’s College Campuses (Oxford). Freitas interviewed dozens of students on Catholic, evangelical, and secular campuses about the sometimes painful struggle that young people have in dealing with the difficult intersection of sexuality and their spiritual life.

Lastly, for pastors who are interested in creating a sermon-based small group ministry at your church, we can think of no better resource than Larry Osborne’s new book Sticky Church (Zondervan). Osborne’s insights on church growth, leadership, small groups, and evangelism are beneficial to leaders of churches of any size.

By Steve Beard, editor of Good News.



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