Over the past couple of months, we have been praying and discussing as a staff what our theme for 2015 should be. This past year (2014) we devoted our preaching and discussions around "Building the Church" using Ephesians to walk through the tough issues of becoming a Christian community on mission together (i.e. being the church in the world). We have long felt that we are on the precipice of revival. We believe we are laying the groundwork for personal and social change in the lives and community of the Kona Coast. With that mind, we believe that story telling will play a prominent role in the life of our church. So, this year our theme will simply be "Reviving Stories," and we will walk through the first story of Jesus written in the Bible, The Gospel of Mark. I'll give a brief summary of what this means for our role as missionaries, but if you're interested in reading Pastor Ryan's perspective, you can find it here.
1). We live in a predominately Oral Culture. Especially in Hawaii, the majority of people interact and grow up in traditional oral structures; that is, a person's primary engagement with the world is oral rather than literate. Culturally speaking, oral communities place high value in relationships, learn more through experience/mentorships, process through stories rather than theory/critical thinking, and process together rather than in isolation. Just think about this: 58% of the US Population never reads a book after high school while 70% of people in North America prefer non-literate forms of communication. The majority of people in our congregations learn through stories, proverbs, songs, and lived experience. And yet, I bet much of our discipleship takes place in the realm of personal introspection and deepening head knowledge. For example, many small groups form around a particular book study, working against the very context of learning assumed by the group's participants.
2). The majority of scripture takes the form of a story. In fact, one could say that the Bible itself is a story with a beginning, middle, and end, plot twists, character development, and even has various authors directed/inspired by the Storyteller for its narrative arc. Each author tends to have particular way of telling how God's story meets their experience, but it remains God's story nonetheless. The Gospel writers seemed to think that the best way to witness to the Kingdom of God and challenge Christians to faithful discipleship was simply to tell the story of Jesus. Stories, orally told, were the key to learning, experiencing, and sharing God for early Christians. For those living in an oral culture, we believe this still to be the case. We want to revive this form of discipleship by reviving stories, working through how God's story intersects and ultimately transforms our own story. We need to learn how to place our story within the Story of God as found in Jesus. If we don't do this, people will continue to find meaning through the various other stories our cultures tell.
3). Our Teaching/Preaching at KCN will take the form of interactive story-telling. Starting in February, we will host a class that will focus on uniting Biblical story-telling with personal narrative; learning to share how our story falls into the scope of God’s story of redemption and communion. Each class will focus on one story from the Book of Mark oriented around a theme of evangelism. Through group dialogue and discovery, our stories of God’s work will be shared with each other, putting into practice the act of “Declaring the Gospel of God.” But even more than that, this will be a starting place for the 7 people within our congregation discerning a call to ministry.
Over the next year, we will learn together the story that God has for these potential ministers but also the Story that God longs to see told throughout the Kona Coast. I, for one, can't wait to see how this narrative unfolds.
P.S. SEVEN People within our congregation discerning a call to ministry! Praise God with us. God is being faithful in calling local leadership to lead locally. May we continue to be faithful to the calling of training local leaders for God's work on the island.
