While I’m on the topic of story feasts, I should point out that telling stories is NOT for women only.  Here’s a story of one way men were transformed by a simple story feast.

A friend from seminary had been struggling with disunity among church board members.  I had told him about Story Feasting and he decided to try his version of it.

At the next meeting, he announced to the group that there would be no minutes nor motions taken that evening.  Instead, each man would have twenty minutes to find a quiet place and write a story of rescue.  Then they would return to tell these stories.  For the first time in one of these meetings, there was complete silence.  The men just stared at my preacher friend, who smiled, handed them the assignment, and sent them off.

Twenty minutes later, they returned.  William, at eighty-one, an original board member, and one of the wisest and gentlest, spoke first.  He had tears in his eyes as he thanked the pastor for reminding him that he was a redeemed man.  He went on to tell the story of how he became a Christian during World War II.

Rod, the youngest elder who had settled in a strict conservative camp where there was little room for the gospel to breathe in any of the “hot button issues,” softened as he heard William’s story.  For the first time in a while, he thought of his deceased grandfather, who had led him to faith.  His grandfather had been a kind and gentle man with a “homegrown” Christianity.  As Rod had begun studying theology, he found himself silently critiquing his grandfather’s simple understandings.  Listening to William, a man from his grandfather’s era, Rod began to realize both his own arrogance in criticizing his grandfather and the arrogance with which he sometimes approached his work on the board.

At that moment, Rod decided to tell a different story than he had written.  He told a rescue story of being raised in a home ravaged by an alcoholic father and of a grandfather who cared for him.  Early on hot summer mornings, his grandfather would come calling at his house and together they would walk to the nearby pond and fish for bream with cane poles.  As they waited for fish and swatted flies and mosquitoes, his grandfather would tell him about the ‘fisher of men’ who loved him and died for him.  Though they never caught many fish, it was in these times that Rod’s heart was deeply hooked by his grandfather’s beloved fisher of men.

From there, the stories took off, and before long, at least four of the thirteen men in the room had tears in their eyes as waves of understanding washed over them.  With each story, each man was reminded again of his own rescue by a loving God who had pursued him to the ends of the earth.  A gospel shift occurred on the board that evening, as many men, not all, had their eyes opened to their sinner-saint status.