At the start of this year I read a book called A million miles in a thousand years, by Donald Miller. The book started me thinking about my life and my part in the unfolding Meta Narrative story God is telling. The idea is that every life is a story…whether it is a story worth telling and talking about is dependent upon how we are living our story. My life mission has been to help steward the dreams in others and by doing so help them discover their unique social mission. I have seen so many God given dreams aborted over the years and I often paused to question if those could have been God seeds needing to be incubated as hope for a future not yet realized.
In the book we discover that “we all have dreams. We dream of falling in love, some dream of changing the world, yet unless we are prepared to live with meaning and direction we are not able to avoid the drift towards the merely acceptable.” As someone who is always working with others to land a new initiative, or find the courage to take a risk and go for their dream, I began to think about how to help others discover their story as a key to helping them unlock their missional contribution.
I invited twelve friends on a journey with me to explore this idea, my objective was to create a learning community that could help one another find the missing elements needed for the story they wanted to live. The out come was amazing as we talked through our lives and borrowed from the elements any author would use in setting out to write a story. We started with the idea that “A story is a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.” This required people to talk about the object of desire that they carried and the fight to overcome the conflict that kept them from achieving it. Writing your story isn’t about making your peaceful fantasies come true, the point of a story is the character arc. The conflict is what changes us.
We talked about how we fight the drift to give up on our stories? One of the story lab participants, Dave Henry said “Honestly, it’s the pull to settle and go the safe route Conversely; it’s also about committing. So, how am I fighting these? At this point, it’s simply being aware of the drift and inviting other people into the mix. I need others to be a part of my story, or the story is incomplete. Not that the story wouldn’t continue, but for it to be epic, it needs other people” As we pushed and pulled the ideas of story around we discovered that telling a story with our lives would mean that we as the Character in our story would ultimately be transformed by the living out of the story.
Because a character is what he does. It is important that we remember that we simply cannot just write our story we must live it. This is the exciting part because now we are 12 people committing to live intentionally. With that intentionality comes our contribution of gifts, talents, and abilities that when focused has the ability to broker transformation. As we change we change the world and for me I want to help others make a commitment to the “God Seed” in them.
I am now beginning to offer story lab as a seminar for others in our city. This will be for those who want to develop a premise for their story and discover how their part is connected to the Meta narrative being told. The controlling idea for our personal story can really be a help to understanding our own vision and mission for our life. We will offer Story lab at the grove when it opens and we can deliver it to other intentional communities as well.
June 11, 2010 at 7:37 pm |
Totally intrigued by this. It tracks with what we do in our student small groups. Would love to hear more about what you are doing to come alongside each other as you understand your stories and how to live more fully in them…How can I find out more?