A Simple Method For Capturing & Telling Stories
It’s not that hard to lead people to Jesus when you tell them a story which they are in.
-Erwin McManus
One of the most powerful ways to cast vision and inspire life change is to share a story.
At West Ridge, the vision of our communications team is to tell the story of what God is doing in and through our church. Through 15 years, we have seen thousands of lives changed and have witnessed powerful stories throughout our community, country and world. But to be honest, it has been a challenge to capture and tell those stories to the rest of the church to help inspire others.
To address that, we’ve put a lot of time and focus on creating a process for capturing and telling stories. Along with that, we’ve been intentionally building a storytelling culture with our staff team. We still have a ways to go, but we have been seeing some great results! Here’s what that process looks like:
Some Things I’ve Learned About Storytelling In The Church
- Not every story needs to be a video. Don’t get stuck with using this as your only method. Other great methods include: blog posts, quotes on social media with a picture, live testimonies and in-service interviews.
- It’s crucial to have each story subject write out their story. We do this before we decide if or how we’re going to share the story. It helps the person writing their story just as much as it helps the team capturing it.
- Build a storytelling culture with your staff and ministry leaders takes time. This doesn’t happen overnight. Consistently encourage the team to share the powerful stories of life change that they encounter. For us at West Ridge, we point each staff person or story subject to WestRidge.com/Story to capture their story. That gives us as a Communications team everything we need to start the process of sharing the story.
There’s a ton more that I could cover here about capturing and telling stories in the church, but I’d love to hear any specific questions or issues you wrestled with. Leave a question or comment below!
