DWTX from Anaheim — With more than 2,000 other Episcopalians, Becky Hunter took a seat in the cavernous worship hall of General Convention on July 9 and rediscovered the ancient and biblical art of heart-felt conversation.
“I sat at our diocesan table, and I thought I knew the people I was sitting with, but I have learned so much more about them today,” said Hunter, a deputy from Indianapolis. “I was brought up with this type of narrative. I was raised in a family where we told stories, listened to stories – related to each other – so it wasn’t completely new to me.
“What was eye-opening to me, though, was how we as a church are having to learn how to tell stories to connect. That’s a little frustrating.”
Hunter participated in the first of three 90-minute sessions titled Mission Conversation which are at the heart of the public narrative project calling for dialogue on mission in the church.
Thursday’s session focused on the “Story of Self,” an exercise in which participants shared the origins of their personal ministry; the story content will be broadened on July 11 to “Story of Us”; on July 13, table conversations will seek ways of “Linking Self and Us to Now.”
With help from about 200 table coaches, each participant spent two minutes telling his or her story, followed by three minutes of feedback from the group. Each table ended their time by asking what they learned about themselves and each other, and pondering whether anything learned can be taken into the world.
Participants were grouped by diocese so the method can be “taken home.”
“This is an ancient form of communication; this is nothing new,” said Marshall Ganz, who teaches the public narrative process at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and is leading the sessions during convention. “But in the modern world, we get so overloaded with professional, expert ways to communicate that we think we’re not supposed to share too much or tell stories that mean something to us because we think, ‘Oh, that’s too emotional…’
“As a result, we lose what is really quite natural, which is the ability to communicate feelings to one another through stories.”
Overcoming not just disagreement but also such distrust is exactly what the public narrative project and these Mission Conversations are all about, Ganz said.
“Learning the public narrative is not about learning script,” he said. “It’s about learning the process, learning the way of listening and communicating and finding expressions of shared values. It can be done.”
Source: Episcopal News Service.
Tags: Stories
I want to know more about this process…We could do this at St. Stephen’s Wimberley….