Chris Seay On Teaching Through Story
Chris Seay just led a great Worship & Arts breakout at Innovation3 on the arts in the church–specifically, communicating stories that help people learn and engage with Scripture. Did you know that neurological and sociological research suggests that people’s brains can’t retain facts long-term unless they have a narrative with which to frame and hold those facts? No, I didn’t either. That’s why Chris Seay is awesome.
Here are my notes from his breakout:
Chris Seay – Worship & Arts
Are we creators or consumers? We’ve created a culture of spiritual consumers — we create nothing.
The gospel calls us to create.
John 1 from The Voice captures the creative work of God — which we can be part of
Chris Seay’s pappy was a one-armed truck driver
How did pappy lose his arm? He got into a bar fight over how the guy was treating was a woman — the guy shoots his arm off. Pappy picked the guy up with his left arm, threw him against the wall, and killed him.
Pappy never talked about it. Pappy shaped Chris’s dad, who shaped Chris. It became Chris’s story because it shaped the way he lived and related to everyone.
The prophets painted a picture of the world as it was and as it should be.
Advent Conspiracy – www.adventconspiracy.org/
The story we are called to tell is the story that will change the world. If we’re only telling facts about the Christian faith, we’ll lose traction.
Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts by Sam Weinberg
- deconstructs how we teach history in the US
- we teach the same way in the church
- the way we teach is deeply flawed
- to learn/understand we need a grid, a story that holds things together
- instead we teach facts so students can regurgitate facts on a test
- if you show the film Amistad, your brain will now have a grid that can hold facts about the Middle Passage of slavery
- in the church we teach facts without story — the brain has nowhere to hold those facts
Jill Taylor’s TED talk on the different sides of the brain.
What if we began to tell a much larger story in the church? Using bigger passages of scripture?
JJ Abrams — story works when you’ve done a lot of character development. Then, what happens to them becomes meaningful.
We know how to parse Greek verbs, but how often do we do character work to allow people to see and smell the stories of scripture?
JJ Abrams — the key to a great story like Lost — mystery (mystery box talk on TED)
Jesus answers the propositions of the Pharisees with the story of the Prodigal Son. At the end of the story, the Pharisees are left wondering what happened to the other son. Did he agree with the father eventually?
No one ever left one of Jesus’s sermons saying, “Thank you — I understand everything now.” They left agitated, confused, and asking questions. Filling in blanks for people is not a way for them to learn.