How to Use Stories to Cut Through the Information Overload

by: VRcurator

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Individuals may represent much of the accomplishment of ministries at your church, but the real work of ministry is often done through teams. Whether a staff team comprised of full and part-time employees or a volunteer team comprised of various degrees of dedicated members, teams are the backbone of church ministry. And yet, most leaders at one time or another are frustrated by the lack of progress of the team toward accomplishing their assigned task.

THE QUICK SUMMARY –  The Orange Revolution by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

The Orange Revolution provides a simple and powerful step-by-step guide to taking your team to the breakthrough level, igniting their passion and vision to bring about accomplishing a shared vision. 

The Orange Revolution model begins with clear visualization and articulation of the team goal, challenges team members with clear commitments to the team and to each other, and wraps up with breakthrough results and sustained success.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

The people on your teams are overwhelmed with information, and in your attempt to help motivate them to move forward, you may be inadvertently contributing to the slowdown. Already confused and overloaded, they assume that your added request will only make thing worse.

Enter the story.

Stories are the most powerful delivery tool for information – more powerful and enduring than any other art form. In the land of complex reality, story is king. Story makes sense of chaos and gives people a plot. Stories can help people who are stuck become unstuck.

There are no guarantees that using story to motivate your team will come out the way you want. But story, on the average, works much better than telling your team “this is the way it’s going to be.”

Story is like a computer app you load into someone’s mind so they can play it using their own input. The best stories play over and over and create the outcomes that fit your goals and ensure that your team keeps moving forward.

Great leaders use story to express their passion and illustrate, illuminate, and inspire their team to greatness itself.

When you want to influence others, there is no tool more powerful than story.

Teams that are focused on wow results have a charming habit of telling stories that exemplify what they are trying to achieve.

Great teams create a narrative. As teams succeed, they tell their stories again and again. They are partly their history, but they also explain to others who they are and what they do.

Breakthrough teams tell stories frequently and with passion. It is a secret ingredient of their success. The power of their stories is in the specificity and vividness, which are the very elements that make them memorable. They get repeated – typically with the same enthusiasm in which they are told.

Stories are vital in helping individuals understand how world-class results are achieved and in making the possibility of doing so believable. Such tales have a way of perpetuating success. The listener retells the story, and more important, internalizes its message and becomes part of the story.

– Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, The Orange Revolution

A NEXT STEP

As you use stories with your teams, you will be using a mixture of credibility, evidence and data, and emotional appeal. You cannot persuade through logic alone, or even logic supported by your credibility. A leader uses stories to illustrate, illuminate, and inspire his team.

What story can you include in your next team meeting? Think about a story (either personal, about someone else, or related to your organization) that you can use in your next team meeting. Telling stories to your team – and then having them repeat them to others – is the virtual equivalent of taking people on a field trip. The use of story will enable them to experience your message at a much more profound level.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 2-3.

This is part of a weekly series posting excerpts from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix book excerpts for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. Additionally, a practical action step is included with each solution.

As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS Remix provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

> > Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: SUMS Remix, Story, Storytelling, The Orange Revolution

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Better Communicator Series #1: Using Storytelling

by: VRcurator

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Let’s face it – many times, our presentations even bore ourselves! Whether leading a meeting, presenting information to a committee, or worst of all, the weekly sermon, how often do you get the sinking feeling you audience is sinking right before your eyes – figuratively, if not literally?

Communication to individuals, to teams, and to large groups is one of the core foundations of the leader’s skill set. And yet, most leaders feel inadequate at times, feeling they are just not connecting.

On top of that, our media-saturated society has an attention span that is growing smaller and smaller, making it difficult to connect, much less persuade, our audience.

Intuitively, as a leader, you know that connecting in person can yield powerful outcomes. Many times it isn’t until you speak to people in person – with one or one hundred or one thousand – that you can establish a visceral connection that motivates them to adopt your idea.

Use Storytelling – connect you with your audience

THE QUICK SUMMARY

What’s your story? It’s a question human beings have been asking each other since we first gathered around a campfire. Millennia later, this human need for storytelling hasn’t changed. We communicate most effectively through our personal stories―and our professional success depends on it.

This groundbreaking guide shows you how to tap into the timeless power of storytelling to transform your business.

You’ll learn the proven three-step method Murray’s firm, Narativ, uses with its clients, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to nonprofits. First, you excavate your personal memories and experiences to generate story ideas that suit your particular needs. Second, you craft and shape these elements into a classic story structure that really connects with audiences. Third, you present your story to your business audience using simple performance techniques that anyone can master. A fundamental element of this method is a focus on listening: the ability to hear yourself, as well as the feedback provided by a given audience―because it is your audience’s listening that shapes your telling.

Everyone needs to communicate well to succeed in business. And everyone has a story to tell. Powered by Storytelling shows you how to tell your story, connect with your audience, and achieve results.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

The human race traces its earliest forms of communication to an oral tradition – stories. Can you picture groups of people around a fire, communicating simple but important lessons to each other? Before writing developed, the passing of stories from one generation to the next was the only way to convey information.

Over time, the stories became much more than just information needed for life. We innately realized that information is static, but stories are dynamic. Stories can help your audience visualize what you do or what you believe.

As noted communication expert Nancy Duarte says,

Stories link one person’s heart to another. Values, beliefs, and norms become intertwined. When this happens, your idea can more readily manifest as reality in their minds.

Stories are the most powerful delivery tool for information – more powerful and enduring than any other art form. 

The effectiveness of your communication is commensurate with the depth of your connection. And nothing makes that connection better than the story you tell.

The seven basic principles of the Narativ storytelling method form the process of excavating, crafting, and presenting your story.

Humans are hardwired for story. We used stories to teach one another how to live. And where we shared these stories, community was formed.

Everyone has a story. Whether you think your story is not important or urgent enough, I can tell you without hesitation that something has happened in your life that would make a great story.

Everyone can learn to tell his or her story better. By performing your stories, your storytelling abilities will improve with time and practice.

Everyone’s story will evolve. A good story evolves naturally, reflecting the reciprocal, mutually influential relationship of listening and telling.

Storytelling is every person’s access to creativity. Storytelling is the most democratic form of creativity because every human being has access to it.

There is a reciprocal relationship between listening and telling. We often think that storytelling is mainly about presentation skills, but these skills are only one part of it. Listening is of equal if not greater importance.

Murray Nossel, Powered by Storytelling

A NEXT STEP

The author’s Narativ storytelling method creates stories in three phases:

1. Excavating – Generating your own story ideas.
2. Crafting – Shaping your story elements into a classic story structure.
3. Presenting – Performing your story for an audience.

Write the three words above on a flip chart to serve as a guide for the remainder of this exercise – creating a story to use.

Keeping the seven principles of the Narativ storytelling method in mind, reflect on the following questions and comments for the three phases, and jot down words and phrases that come to mind.

Excavating

• In which past event or series of events is your story located?
• Think of, and express ideas, without any concern for their value, feasibility, or significance. Give free rein to your creative brain.

Crafting

• Bring the power of critical thinking to bear, honing in on the ideas listed above.
• Shape the ideas into the classic story structure of beginning, ending, and an emotional turning point in between.
• Ask the question, “What happened?” to continue to shape your story and uncover new parts to it.

Presenting

• Learn to tell your story without referring to notes or visuals.
• Know your ending, giving you confidence in where your story is going.
• Engage your whole being in the telling of the story.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 107-1, released December 2018.

This is part of a weekly series posting excerpts from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix book excerpts for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. Additionally, a practical action step is included with each solution.

As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS Remix provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

>> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

>> Purchase prior issues of SUMS Remix<<

Tags: Communication, Murray Nossel, Powered by Storytelling, SUMS Remix, Storytelling

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Lead Your Organization with the Power of Storytelling

by: VRcurator

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Storytelling embodies an approach that is well adapted to meet the deep challenges of leadership. Situations in which story impacts people across an organization include:

• Persuading them to adopt an unfamiliar new idea
• Charting a future course
• Attracting the best talent
• Instilling passion and discipline
• Aligning individuals to work together
• Calling everyone to continue believing in leadership through the unpredictable ups and downs

The underlying reason for the affinity between leadership and storytelling is simple: narrative, unlike abstraction and analysis, is inherently collaborative.

Storytelling helps leaders work with other individuals as co-participants, not merely as objects or underlings. Storytelling helps strengthen leaders’ connections with the world.

After all, isn’t this what all leaders need – a connection with people they are seeking to lead?

“The mistake people make is thinking the story is just about marketing. No, the story is the strategy. If you make your story better you make the strategy better.”

– Ben Horowitz

THE QUICK SUMMARY

Content strategists Joe Lazauskas and Shane Snow offer an insider’s guide to transforming your business—and all the relationships that matter to it—through the art and science of telling great stories.

Smart businesses today understand the need to use stories to better connect with the people they care about. But few know how to do it well. In The Storytelling Edge, the strategy minds behind Contently, the world renowned content marketing technology company, reveal their secrets that have helped award-winning brands to build relationships with millions of advocates and customers.

Join as they dive into the neuroscience of storytelling, the elements of powerful stories, and methodologies to grow businesses through engaging and accountable content.

With The Storytelling Edge you will discover how leaders and workers can craft the powerful stories that not only build brands and engage customers, but also build relationships and make people care—in work and in life.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION – Transform your organization through the power of storytelling.

When Thomas Davenport and John Beck wrote the book The Attention Economy, they brought a very important message to church leaders. The book argues that information and talent are no longer your most important resource, but rather attention itself. People cannot hear the vision unless we cut through the clutter.

The principle of attention requires church leaders to be bold and relevant as they integrate vision into the internal communication of the church. According to Davenport and Beck, these are the most important characteristics to get attention:

• The communication is personalized.
• The communication comes from a trustworthy source.
• The communication is brief.
• The communication is emotional.

Imagine the implications of these attributes for your church’s communications. Are you sending targeted, HTML e-mails to supplement snail mail and print communication? Are you delivering your most important sound bites via podcast? Finally, it is important to keep good communications people close to the core leadership. They shouldn’t have to guess about your church’s DNA. Rather, allow them to be privy to all the conversations and dialogue that surround development and articulation of your vision.

Harness the power of storytelling, and organizations and their leaders will win advocates and customers at a larger scale than ever before.

Stories Make Products and Services Better

Stories have a huge impact on the way people decide what products to buy. We’ll do a lot because of a good story. We’ll change our minds about a product if it incorporates a good story. We’ll change our minds about a product if it incorporates a good story. We’ll pay a little extra for a product that has an inspirational backstory. And we’ll give something a second chance because of a redemption story.

Stories Make Advertising Better

Corporations are realizing that the most effective way to find a hit is to strategically create content (story), test how it will connect with audiences, and then optimize the approach based on what they learned.

Stories Make Your Hiring Process Better

There are no real boundaries between internal and external marketing anymore. When you tell a great story that inspires the outside world, it also inspires the people inside your four walls.

Stories Build Your Brand

Brands that embrace great storytelling can achieve an incredible advantage over their competition.

Joe Lazauskas and Shane Snow, The Storytelling Edge

A NEXT STEP

How do you effectively invite people to take an active part in your vision? This is a constant challenge for leaders of every organization I work with. The answer? Vision-soaked communication. Get clear about your vision, develop a palette of tools to communicate it, and then let it soak into and through every way you communicate.

This is what the best organizations in the world do so well. Apple. Tesla. Amazon. Every piece of communication or interaction you have with these organizations is absolutely soaked in their vision, mission, and values. Just when you read the names of those organizations, colors and feelings were evoked inside of you, weren’t they? That’s the power of vision-soaked communication.

All ministry is communication intensive. It follows that story telling and understanding the nuances of story will help any leader in the daily ebb and flow of communication. Use these story types as described by Auxano Founder Will Mancini to do an inventory on your own “range” of utilizing of stories as a leader.

CREATION STORY

This does not refer to the first book of Scripture but to the genesis of the organization itself. If you are a pastor, you should know more about the creation story of your church than anyone on the planet. What are the circumstances—passions, problems, and people—surrounding how the church got started to begin with? Mastering the richness of the creation story will help in two major ways. First, it will hold insight into the unique culture of the church and therefore future decision-making and vision. Second, your mastery of the story itself will bring tremendous credibility with people when initiating change.

> ACTION STEP: Write a one-page, two-minute creation story talk. If you have any gaps in your knowledge interview people in your church until you know more than anyone else.

SIGNATURE STORY

A signature story relates to any milestones or hand-of-God moments after the creation story. Obviously a church with more history will have more signature stories. These accounts show off strengths of the church and God’s hand in its history. Look for signature stories when discerning a church’s Kingdom Concept (What can your church do better than 10,000 others?). These stories reveal the values and mark the high-water line of God’s activity and unique journey for each church. Use the signature stories the same way as the creation story: celebrating God’s goodness, explaining decision-making and guiding change.

> ACTION STEP: Make a list of 3-5 possible signatures stories in your church. Ask key leaders to do the same and make a master list of the top five.

FOLKLORE

Folklore stories are simply ones that are worth being told and retold. While there may be overlap between the first two on the list, folklore often focuses on the life change journey of individuals. Even though everyone has special stories of God’s transforming work in their lives, folklore shows off, in brilliant detail, the mission or strategy, a value or life mark, from the church’s articulated. Folklore often embeds a moment of modeling—like repeated prayer, gospel conversation or invitation toward an unchurched friend—that reflects “the win” we are striving for as a congregation. Imagine a church planter who sees a convert grow with unusual intentionality to become a key leader in the church. This story could model the pattern that we hope to see repeated over and over.

> ACTION STEP: Identify three stories from individuals in your church that you know could never be shared too much. Ask another leader in your church to capture all of the details of the story in a two-page, five-minute summary.

HORIZON STORY

Now turn your attention of story-telling to the future. Think of the horizon story as a time-machine window where you tell people what God is going to do. It may have a lead in like, “What if…” or “Imagine…” Tell a story of what the church will be like in one year. How about three years? When crafting this vision-casting story, it’s important not to be presumptuous. To guard against that make sure you show what we call the “God smile,” that is, remind people that this is God’s idea not yours.

> ACTION STEP: Prepare a two-minute story to tell someone what your church will look like in one year. To give yourself freedom, don’t worry about sharing it with anyone— you may or may not. But practice thinking about the future feel of a story.

THE GOSPEL

The centerpiece of all story telling is the gospel. It is important to define every other story in relationship to the grand news of God’s intervention in our world and our lives through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. You may wonder, “This is a given, so why would you mention this as an organizational story?” First, many congregations are stuck in a shallow appreciation for the gospel’s ongoing presence and power in daily life. Second, as you master story as a leader, you won’t want to develop and practice the other story types to the neglect of the gospel. Rather, let the gospel develop you as you integrate it into all story telling. 

> ACTION STEP: Grab a copy of Center Church by Tim Keller and study the section on “Atonement Grammars.” This is one of the most helpful summaries available.

TEACHABLE POINT OF VIEW

The last two kinds of stories have to do more with the personal life of the leader. A teachable point of view, a term coined by Noel Tichy in The Leadership Engine, is the story that surrounds personal leadership learning. Informal leadership development happens best when an experienced leader, in relationship with other leaders can unpacks stories of why they do what they do. Where did this conviction come from? What led me to develop this skill? Why did I make what seemed to be a counter-intuitive decision? The more that you have thought about your leadership’s teachable point of views, the more often and intentional will be the transference of wisdom in your leadership culture.

> ACTION STEP: Take 20 minutes and write down your top 10 learnings as a leader. Write down a few bullet points and begin to flesh out the story behind the learning.

CONVERSION STORY

The last story is the perhaps the most obvious, but should not go unstated. In many leader’s lives, there is a failure to acknowledge the story of the personal journey with God at its very beginning. Maybe that’s because it happened when the leader was young, which seems pretty distant from the “important” leadership work of today. How many people on your leadership team know the details of how you trusted Jesus and how you grew in affection for the gospel? Using your own conversation story as a leader is important for at least three reasons. First, it will keep you humble. Second, it’s a personal help to keep the gospel at the center of all stories. Third, it will model for people the importance of sharing a personal testimony.

> ACTION STEP: Create a one-page, two-minute conversion story testimony. Practice sharing it with one other person a week, asking the other person to share their conversion story.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 94-2, released June 2018.

This is part of a weekly series posting excerpts from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix book excerpts for church leaders.

Each issue SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. Additionally, a practical action step is included with each solution.

As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS Remix provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

> > Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Communicating with story, Joe Lazauskas, Shane Snow, Stories, Storytelling, The Storytelling Edge

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Communicate Your Vision: Use More Than Words

by: VRcurator

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The right vision for the future of an organization moves people to action, and because of their action, the organization evolves and makes process. Like a bicycle, an organization must continually move forward, or fall over. The role of vision in driving the organization forward is indispensable.

The vision’s power lies in its ability to grab the attention of those both inside and outside the organization and to focus that attention on a common dream – a sense of direction that both makes sense and provides direction.

To that end, your church’s vision cannot exist merely as words on a page or website, or in an impressive visual display in your church foyer.

Articulating your vision through consistent and powerful ideas is one of the toughest tasks of leadership.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling by Stephen Denning

This revised and updated edition of the best-selling book A Leader’s Guide to Storytelling shows how storytelling is one of the few ways to handle the most important and difficult challenges of leadership: sparking action, getting people to work together, and leading people into the future.

Using myriad illustrative examples and filled with how-to techniques, this hands-on guide clearly explains how you can learn to tell the right story at the right time.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION – Look forward by thinking backward

Whoever you are in the organization – leadership team, department director, or someone on the front lines – you can lead by using stories to effect change.

However, as leaders well know, most people do not like change. So any story involving an uncertain future that is different that the present faces a difficult road.

Humans naturally remain anchored to the past. We also have an aversion to loss – that is, we are typically more concerned about what we must give up rather than be excited about what we gain. We also have an ownership bias, meaning we want to hang on to what we have.

The truth is that people usually don’t want to believe a future story that involves significant disruption. So what’s a leader to do?

When we dream alone, it’s just a dream. When we dream together, it’s already the beginning of a new reality.

By definition, future stories aren’t true stories. Since the future hasn’t happened yet, it’s impossible to say anything totally reliable about it, particularly where human beings are involved. The first step in augmenting the credibility of a future story is to explore whether the length of the causal chain between the situation today and the imagined future can be reduced. The longer the chain of causation, the greater the chance that one or more of the links will break, as some unexpected development throws all predictions into chaos.

Since the plausibility of the story is related to the length of the causal chain, it’s useful to take this thinking a step further. You can shorten the future causal chain to zero by using a springboard story.

A springboard story is a story about the past – something that has already happened. However, the springboard story elicits a future story in the minds of the listeners – the listeners start to imagine what the future could be like if they implemented the relevant change idea embedded in the story in their own contexts.

The springboard story itself doesn’t need updating because it doesn’t change: it’s already happened. As a result, you avoid the yawning gap between the future as envisaged and the future as it unfolds.

Moreover, because the springboard story’s listeners invent the future for themselves, they are much more likely to find that future alluring than if some stranger had dreamed it up for them.

Stephen Denning, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling

A NEXT STEP

Build a team vision exercise around the author’s idea of the “springboard” story as described above.

Write down a sequence of activities describing your current vision that you would like to improve or update. Write down each activity on a sticky note.

Place the sticky notes in a row and start building new ideas for each sticky note. Ask: “If this hadn’t happened, what would have instead?”

Every time you add a new idea, reflect on its impact on the rest of the sequence.

Continue with the rest of the sticky notes, adding as many new ideas to each activity as possible.

When you have finished, create a new story using the new ideas you have developed.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix #84-3, released January 2018.

This is part of a weekly series posting excerpts from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix book excerpts for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. Additionally, a practical action step is included with each solution.

As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS Remix provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

> > Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Change, Stephen Denning, Storytelling, The Leader's Guide to Storytelling

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Do More of What You Do Best with 6 Powerful Secrets

by: Will Mancini

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Tags: Clarity, Communication, Storytelling, Will Mancini

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Storytelling Begins with Passion, People, and Place

by: Steven Chaparro

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When our clients come to us, invariably they arrive with a need for which they require a solution.  Simple enough.  However, if we attempt to deliver a solution without a proper understanding of the problem, we will fail every single time.

At Visioneering Studios, we begin our Envision.Design.Build process by putting down our pens and turning up our ears.   We dare not present any sort of solution until we understand the story of the people for whom we are working and the place they want to create.

Everything begins with the story.

At the core of our team is our identity as storytellers, spatial storytellers.  We are a multi-disciplinary group of professionals bringing years of experience to the table from film, urban planning, architecture, interior design, development, real estate, and writing.  We have learned that to best understand the story we must first assume the roles of cultural anthropologists.  We will search for the three elements that will drive this story; passion, people, and place.

>> PASSION: A NARRATIVE OF REDEMPTION

Most people would agree with the definition of passion as “a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something.”  That’s nice…but that doesn’t quite do it for me.  It’s a little too fluffy, too polished, and nothing like real life.

My view of passion is more akin to the one that describes the anguish and suffering that Jesus Christ endured the night before and during his crucifixion.  For me, passion is the amount of pain that one is willing to endure in order to fulfill the mission.  It’s not always a pleasant experience, but it is one driven by a sense of moral and spiritual imperativeness.

Passion is a narrative of redemption.  Redemption is about change or transformation.  Stories grip our heartstrings when they describe a peaceful existence torn apart by insurmountable adversity, and then climax with a heroic victory.

Spatial storytelling must follow the same story arc.

We ask our church partners, what “dead and dry bones” do you want to see new life breathed into?  What marriages do you see as mended?  What parental prayers do you believe will be answered?  What stories will be rewritten?

That’s the passion we are talking about.  This is the story we want to help tell; a narrative of redemption.

>> PEOPLE: THE CAST OF CHARACTERS

Stories simply do not exist without characters.  Each church we work with has a unique calling to a specific people.  These people are possibly made up of different socio-economic statuses, ethnicities, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, and other sub-cultures.  Each of them derives identity and meaning from different things and different places.  Are these understood?

Before you design a solution or deliver a sermon you believe will change lives, listen to them first.  This is called empathy.  One of my favorite quotes about empathy comes from the René Laennec, the French physician/inventor of the stethoscope.  He told his students, “Listen to your patients, they are telling you how to heal them.”

When you understand the context and character of your audience, you will be able to deliver a suitable word, which is fitly spoken “…like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” Empathy makes you a better designer, a better preacher, and a better problem solver.

>> PLACE: A SOIL-SPECIFIC SOLUTION

Not only has God given you a unique passion for a specific people, but He has also called you to a specific place.  This may be defined as a metropolitan area, a city proper, or a specific neighborhood.

In the secular world, there is a growing appreciation for place.  Retailers like Starbucks have adopted the business model of making third places (the place between where you work and play).  Developers are creating mixed-use developments to manufacture cities within cities, and place making is a trending topic aim in the architecture and urbanism circles.

But, where is the Church in this conversation?

Some churches have failed to understand and adopt a proper theology of place, which states that it is God’s desire, plan, and promise to redeem a connection to people and place.  They hold on to an old model of sacred spaces, which separates the sacred from the secular by creating ‘holy huddles’.  They isolate themselves from the community to which they are called to redeem and to bring Shalom.

They fail to connect to connect the theological dots.  When Jesus Christ exhaled His last breath on the cross, not only was His job finished, but also the tabernacle veil was ripped in two.  This veil, which had previously relegated access to God’s presence to one person one time a year, was eternally torn to allow access by all mankind.  This democratization of access was foreshadowed when a Samaritan woman, a cultural and spiritual half-breed, met Jesus, a Jewish rabbi, at a water well and experienced redemption.

Churches today are not only called to be places for redemption, but they called to be places of redemption.  Places where every Average Joe and Plain Jane could encounter redemption in synch with the natural rhythms of their life.  These are the connections between the God’s passion for a people and a place.

So, what does that look like?  Well, that’s where the story making begins.

Read more from Steve.

Tags: Passion, People, Place, Steven Chaparro, Storytelling, Visioneering Studios

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Utilizing Storytelling in Promoting Your Ministry Brand

by: Jon Thomas

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The most effective mass media is the stories we tell and conversations we have with each other. If you don’t believe me, let me prove it to you.

We’ve all seen an endless number of ads for cars, car dealerships, and the like. If I think really hard, I may be able to remember a few of them. Let’s see… I remember the Volkswagen ad with Kid Vader (but mostly because it was so talked-about, not because I thought it was so effective). I remember the Toyota Celica ads in which the senior citizen sees a parked Celica and yells, “Slow down. This is a neighborhood!” If you gave me 10 more minutes, I could probably think of another three to five, but not much more. Considering how many car ads I’ve seen in my lifetime, that’s a pretty low recall rate, and I can assure you that none of them influenced my purchase decisions.

Recently I watched a six-minute video in which a young man, who happens to be too young to drive, tells a story that takes place in a Honda CR-V. His story nearly brought me to tears, then [spoiler alert] had me rejoicing at the end. I was smiling ear to ear, and immediately shared on every social network I could. If you haven’t heard Noah St. John’s story, you should now.

THE POWER OF STORY

I own a Ford Escape now and love it. Though I had searched for an SUV, a Honda CR-V never entered my consideration set. It just didn’t seem to be a fit for me.

But I find myself thinking of Noah and his family’s CR-V lately. My mileage is about to exceed 50,000, and I wonder where I’ll be at 100,000, and I think of Noah’s story. When my wife and I were at Babies“R”Us this past weekend to register for her shower, we looked at car seats, and I thought of it again. I wondered what kinds of practices I’d bring my child to. I wondered if my Escape would be as cherished as his CR-V. Granted, the video is fresh in my mind, but I watched a lot of TV yesterday and I couldn’t tell you five commercials I saw.

Stories are so powerful because they move us emotionally (which ads also can but rarely do). We may not remember the story forever, but we certainly remember it longer than we do that $4 million Times Square Billboard or Super Bowl ad.

THE BEST ADS AREN’T ADS

At the end of last year, our company put together a list of the best ads of 2012, and go figure, the best ads of 2012 weren’t ads. I’ll argue that Noah’s story is going to be Honda’s best CR-V ad of 2013—one the company didn’t pay a single dime for, and one that isn’t even an ad. It’s a story.

If the non-ad does come out on top, it will be no surprise. The most shareable media is most often owned or earned, and that’s because effective advertising isn’t about exposure. It’s about conversations. Since 99.99 percent of the time, the conversations people have with one another are not about your ad (or anyone else’s), only the most relevant, entertaining and informative content will be remembered and shared.

HONDA’S REACTION

I’m actually surprised by Honda’s reaction. If I were Honda, I’d be embracing Noah’s performance in a bear hug. But other than earning a passing mention on Honda’s Facebook page, Noah’s story (which has received nearly half a million views) was practically ignored by the brand. Granted, it’s still early. Honda may have larger plans. Maybe it’ll record his performance in a real studio and use it as a long-form ad. Or maybe it’s distancing itself from the story because it features a two-mother (and no-father) household. I don’t know.

Unfortunately, there’s not much a brand can do to create stories like this one. That’s what makes them so effective—their authenticity. But brands have to implement ways to find customer stories like Noah’s and embrace them in a way that will amplify the message and allow it to be more searchable and shareable. It also requires a certain commitment to quality. If the CR-V constantly broke down and was unreliable, they may have never it might never have made it to 100K.

LEAN FORWARD

Whatever the case may be, Noah’s story is 100 percent authentic. It’s from Noah, not from a brand. That allows audiences to uncross their arms and lean forward, accepting the story into their lives even if it contains a brand, because the story isn’t from the brand.

Most people don’t have 30-seconds to be interrupted by a commercial or held hostage by a pre-roll ad, but nearly a half-million people had six minutes to hear Noah’s story. Heck, I had 90-minutes to blog about it.

The greatest brand stories are the ones told by the brand’s fans.

Read more from Jon here.

Tags: Attention, Brand, Jon Thomas, Storytelling

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When the Light Comes On: Creatively Using the Power of Story for Your Church’s Worship

by: Jonathan Parnell

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Stories move us. They engage us. They inspire us. Stories give us examples of how to act – and how not to act. The best ones stay with us forever.

How can you use the power of story for your church’s worship? Here are two powerful examples: the simplicity of a verbal  story and the imagery of a visual story. Enjoy – and learn.         – Vision Room Curator

When the Light Comes On

My oldest daughter isn’t sleeping well. It’s the dark. From fear of what might be under her bed, to who might be looking through her window, she has her reasons for preferring the lights on.

In fact, she has started a new nightly routine. After the house is settled and her parents are quiet, presumably asleep, she secretly slips out of her room to flip on the nearby hallway light and then returns to bed. Somehow she finds a measure of comfort from the crease of light between the floor and the bottom of her door.

But she shouldn’t be doing this. The rule is to stay in bed. And a few nights ago I caught her red-handed.

I was standing quietly in the dark hall and heard her scurrying around behind her door. She didn’t know I was there, and I suspected she was going to pull the hall light stunt. Sure enough, the door slowly cracked open. I have her, I thought. But she didn’t move. She didn’t come turn on the light. She was frozen. There, inside the frame of her door, she peered in silence at me, a black silhouette of a stranger for all she knew. Then she started to cry. I quickly flipped the light switch. “Sweetie, it’s me,” I said, picking her up in my arms. And just like that, she was fine. The light was on. She saw who I was. I hugged her with love.

The whole scene transformed when the light came on. That light uncovered my identity. Once blinded by darkness, she soon discovered that the figure in the hallway, appearing bigger and stronger than her, was actually her dad who loves her and would spend his every conceivable resource to protect her.

Revelation was the key. She had to see who I was.

God in the Dark

Do you remember what it is like to be in the dark with God?

So much of our lives — and the entire lives of some — are spent hauntingly aware of some strange presence down a pitch-black hallway. We know he is there. We recognize some silhouette of deity. We see some figure of a being our conscience says is bigger and stronger. But we don’t truly know him. And we won’t truly know him unless he turns on the light. Unless he reveals himself.

The prophets of Baal know what it’s like to be in the dark. In one of the saddest scenes in all of Scripture, 1 Kings 18:28–29, hundreds of these prophets gathered to see their god. It was a historic showdown between Elijah, the Lord’s prophet, and 450 “spokesmen” for the false god Baal. The petition was simple: send fire from heaven. Whoever answers is the true God (1 Kings 18:24). And so the prophets of Baal stepped up to the plate.

And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no one answered. (1 Kings 18:26)

That’s not a good start. So they tried harder. The Bible tells us that they cried aloud and cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out (1 Kings 18:28). Until the middle of the day, they limped around bleeding and crying out for their god to hear them, to say something. Imagine that scene: 450 wounded, weeping prophets sliced up their flesh in hopes of receiving the slightest gesture from their god.

“But there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention” (1 Kings 18:29).

They were stuck in the dark. There was nothing to see. There is no light to reveal a no-god. The abiding darkness answers itself.

We Have a Different Story

But there’s no such darkness between the Christian and his Lord. That’s not our story. In fact, it’s the reverse. Rather than 450 prophets with wounds all over their bodies and their blood gushing out, we see our God hanging on a cross with wounds all over his body, his blood gushing out. Rather than the horrific scene of fools seeking to hear from a false god, we see the most preeminent display of love when the real God spoke to a world of fools.

We were in the dark. We deserved nothing more. And then, in unspeakable grace, the sovereign God of the universe reached up to turn on the light — “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

His voice intruded the defeated darkness. He reached down and picked us up in his arms. “It’s me,” he said. And then we learn that this God, bigger and stronger than we could ever imagine, hasn’t spared his greatest resource to not only protect us but ensure our everlasting joy (Romans 8:32).

The light is on. We see who he is. We don’t have to be afraid.

Read more from Jonathan here.

Elevation Creative: Elijah on Mount Carmel

During our series IN•FIN•8, we’re looking back at eight of the greatest stories forever told. To introduce each week’s sermon, our Creative Team retells one of these stories from a different perspective, in an attempt to recapture the power and impact of hearing for the first time. For part three, we combined spoken word with step-dancing to tell the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel in a dramatic new way.

Tags: Elevation Church, Jonathan Parnell, Scripture, Story, Storytelling

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Brand Storytelling: The Technology of Storytelling

by: Jon Thomas

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JOE SABIA—THE TECHNOLOGY OF STORYTELLING

In less than four minutes, iPad storyteller Joe Sabia introduces the audience to Lothar Meggendorfer and explains how Lothar’s invention of the pop-up book is helping us tell stories today. He also makes me realize that I’m underutilizing my iPad.

What brands can learn from this talk

“The art of storytelling has remained unchanged…but the way in which humans tell the stories has always evolved, with pure consistent novelty,” Sabia says. Emerging technology has allowed brands to tell stories in many ways. Consider all the storytelling options available to your brand. You aren’t required to embrace and be present on all channels, but don’t limit yourself to traditional mediums because that’s all you know. There are so many tools available that are more effective and less expensive than traditional, interruptive means, and inevitably there will be even newer tools that have yet to be imagined.

Read more from Jon here.

Tags: Attention, Awareness, Brand, Jon Thomas, Storytelling, Technology

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Brand Storytelling: The Danger of a Single Story

by: Jon Thomas

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Novelist and storyteller Chimamanda Adichie, a native of eastern Nigeria, has learned firsthand how listening to only one story can lead to critical misunderstandings. She tells of how her U.S. professor felt that her portrayal of Africans in a novel wasn’t authentic, because they were well-fed and driving cars; and of her own guilt when on a visit to Mexico, she realized that her belief in the story of Mexicans sneaking across the border and fleecing the U.S. health-care system was far from accurate. Stories are powerful, but they can create untruths when they become the only story.

What brands can learn from this talk
Stories can and often will define a brand, for better or worse. While it is important for a brand to unearth its story platform—the story at the heart of the brand—and tell it in ways that inform and excite, hearing only one such story can cause misunderstanding—even if it’s a good story. Audiences hearing a single negative story can receive an even more destructive message.

If you believed the single story of energy drinks as a category, you’d believe that all brands are selling a glorified concoction of caffeine and sugar. But Red Bull has a vise-like grip on its brand story—about living life to the fullest—thus propelling them to social success and incredible brand affinity.

As a brand marketer, you must ensure that your audience hears a variety of relevant stories and forming ideas and opinions about those that come from the brand itself. That means you’ll have to not only create content but actively engage with audiences, particularly negative ones, to steer all conversations toward the truth.

Read more from Jon here.

Tags: Attention, Awareness, Chimamanda Adichie, Story, Storytelling

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