How To Tell Your Ministry’s Story

If you can tell a good story, you can teach something and then the kids remember it. But it's not just good for kids. It's good for us, too. Hey, everybody.

Welcome back to the Blue Vineyard podcast. My name is Luke and I'm here for the very first time with Adam Weeks. Adam, welcome. Hello, Luke.

Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much for inviting me on to this podcast. I am super excited to be here. Yeah.

So people who have been listening to us up until now, maybe not aware of who you are. You recently joined our team. And so maybe Arthur, for a start, could you give us a little bit of idea of what your role is and who you are? And yeah, give us a little bit of an idea.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I am super excited to be here. My role here at Blue Vineyard is We're working on some sales, some working on marketing and getting the good word out about what Blue Vineyard is doing. My background, I kind of come from a world of Adventist education.

I was a school teacher and principal and then recently really dove into the world of WordPress. And it's been fun how our worlds have kind of collided in ministry and technology and the web. And it's an absolute pleasure to be here with you today. Thank you, Luke.

That's excellent. So one of the things that I've really enjoyed about about working with you is the fact that you have a very keen sense of what stories work, what messaging works. And so as we've been having these conversations, that's where really the idea for this episode came from, because we were chatting about what we could be sharing. How can we providing value to the community?

And I really wanted to leverage Adam's skill set in shaping those messages and that storytelling aspect, as he's been helping us do as a company. I wanted to be able to share that with you, with the broader community. So yeah, that's the objective. We're starting a new series today is the beginning of a new series.

Yes, we have been interviewing people and we will interview others. And you're going to obviously hear a lot more from Adam. But as we go through, we thought the very best place to start this core theme that we're going to be looking at is telling stories or telling the story of your ministry or organization. Adam, if you can sort of set us up a little bit, where do you think of, where do we start when we're thinking about storytelling or maybe where do you want to go?

Oh, I love this topic. If you think to your own experience about the things you actually remember about life, maybe it's a sermon, maybe it is a teacher. We remember the stories. We don't remember the day to day this happened and that happened, that happened.

It's the stories that make the difference. The life of Jesus is so attuned to that that he was telling stories that were directly connected with the people he was talking to. And if it's good for Jesus, I feel like we should definitely be taking that as a strong indicator of it's good for our ministries as well. And that's one I'm so passionate about storytelling.

In my experience as a teacher, I really appreciated the storytelling and trying to get better at that and helping to resonate and to teach through storytelling. If you can tell a good story, you can teach something and then the kids remember it. But it's not just good for kids, it's good for us too. So yeah, storytelling all the way, I'm all about it.

I was reflecting on this a little bit yesterday about These topics that we're going to be chatting about and I was thinking about the greater funnel of how people get the word out about anything that they do and how story is really central to every every phase of that you know there's you know whether that's the short form social media that people are seeing you know all the way out there they ask it's still story it's just story in the micro right that they're just like tiny stories but then as you get through to. Longer form content your website even the print materials that you make that they're all telling parts of that story and in different like levels of. Zoom in zoom out whatever that might look like so if you understand your story right from the outset it shapes your in your entire communication structure for whatever it is that you're doing. Absolutely.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be this long, huge, big story. It can be very small. And if you don't mind, I'd love to kind of go through the elements of a story. I think this is important.

The first part of a good story, you need to set the scene and that includes your characters. And let's, let's, should we do a little exercise? Let's maybe tell a story as we're explaining this. Sure.

In the US, we have a restaurant called In-N-Out Burger. Are you familiar with In-N-Out, Luke? I've heard the name, but I have never eaten there as a resident of Australia. Absolutely.

So In-N-Out is often very busy. It's just a busy restaurant. You can think of a kind of a bustling diner sort of perspective. And a story could start with something like of setting the scene.

My friends and I, we're all late one night, we were hungry. And so we ran over to In-N-Out and the place was crowded. All right. Pretty good.

You know, if you, especially you've been there, we start with setting the scene. We've got my friends. We walk up to the front of the counter after waiting in line and we give our order and everyone is super excited. We go and we have a, we sit down. and we're waiting, but we're hungry and we're waiting and we're waiting some more and we're getting hungry and people who are behind us, they're getting their food and I'm not sure what's happening.

We have a problem. People are hungry and we're increasing the stakes. The thing is rising. We're getting hungrier and hungrier.

People are getting past us, but we're going to keep the stakes rising a little bit further. We're hungry. We don't know what to do. People are getting their food.

And I want to go say something, but there's a really big guy behind the counter and he's got tattoos and he looks really scary. I don't want to go talk to him because I don't know. But I really want my food. So I finally I get my courage up and I go and I talk to him.

And he was the nicest guy. I told him what happened. He said, I'm so sorry. I can't believe that.

We'll grab it right away. Here's an extra french fry. Here's a milkshake. You guys have a great evening.

My friends and I, we sat down with our food and it was the best meal we've ever had. So what we had there was rising tension. We're hungry people. There's a big scary guy behind the counter.

I don't know what we're going to do. And then we have the like the point of like where all comes together in this story where it's this like, oh no, I have to interact with this. person and I don't know what it's going to be like. And that's the climax of the story. And will you, won't you despite maybe this person yells at you and get out of my restaurant, you know, like, no, it ends up having a resolution.

We not only get our food, we get an extra milkshake and a French fry happily ever after we get our food and have to. So that in is a quick little story, but you kind of need all of those components. You can tell it very quickly. But it also is something that's going to last over a huge book or a multiple hour movie.

But you kind of see those different components of a good story. I love that. That's an example of how a story gets told. What if we look at how that gets applied?

So maybe if you can think of some ministries or organizations in the Adventist world that we can point out as examples of this being done well. Absolutely. You take the different elements of good storytelling, where we're setting the scene, who the characters are, and then there is a rising tension. When we talk about our Seventh-day Adventist missional work, it becomes pretty clear that what the setting is, what the scene is, and what the rising tension is.

This is a crazy world. and all the things that come with that rising tension and the messaging that we have about this rising tension. But we have a resolution, right? We have a climax to the story and we have that resolution. And taking that, depending on what part of your story you can, that is obviously the overall, I was doing this with a Sabbath school group and For God so loved the world, setting the scene, characters.

So then what? For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only begotten son. All right, so that is the, that's the climax. So that we can live forever, you know, with him.

So for God so loved the world, he gave his one and only begotten son so that we can have this eternal story with him. So that's, that's in John 3.16, we've got a story. But can you use your specific ministry to tell that in different ways? I've got a few different people that I have looked at.

You were mentioning someone named Kevin Wilson. Yeah, Kevin. I know Kevin, and I'll send this to you, Kevin. So, hi.

Nice to talk to you again. Hey, Kevin. Hey, Kevin. So, Kevin is, some know him as the Chai guy or the CEO of Chai.

He is he's a pastor he's done you know a lot of great work as a pastor but somewhere along I believe it was like around the lockdowns that you know during 2020 thereabouts but he started to blow up online making chai so you know doing content around creating chai because that's you know that that's his background you know that's what he loves and so he started using that as a teaching tool and telling stories and so he would tell stories about His heritage in Sri Lanka he would talk about being a third culture kid growing up in different locations and being disconnected from his previous homes or whatever that might have looked like and his experiences and so many people, you read the comments, so many people resonate so deeply with the story that gets told and he uses that as an opportunity for ministry. He goes to places and makes chai at scale. For you know events and things and uses it as I say as a teaching tool and tells that story and so many people read in the comments and they just say about how it touched them so deeply because it is something that they can relate to and there's like you say there's those narrative elements the beginning middle and then there's the there's the tension there's the history there's all of these things that he kind of stacks together and I think as an individual brand and he's now used that to. Then build other things like as an example I think he just recently he did a tour correct me if I'm wrong Kevin but he did a tour he took people over to Sri Lanka and you know use that as a part of his his empire that he's building for you know for God I don't mean that in a bad way but I mean like he's yet genuinely using those storytelling skills to build something that's bigger than himself and that is beautiful that's the power of what storytelling or good storytelling can do.

That's awesome. Yeah, no, it's we all want to connect. That's such a human experience where we want to connect with one another and we're looking for that way that we have something in common with someone else or we can experience something through what they're experiencing. Yeah, what a great ministry that he has.

Yeah. You were also mentioning, because that's an example of an individual, and I think with the way technology has gone, we have this democratization of attention, where anybody can go and get attention based on whatever their interests are or what their skill sets are. But the storytelling works all the way up, right, from the individual level, but also in our larger organization. We were chatting about amazing facts, as an example, like that's a ministry that you know, most people in Adventism will be familiar with because they've been around for a very long time and they're huge.

But they they tell stories, right? That's one of the fundamental parts. And honestly, it started with a story. And I remember as a kid, Doug Batchelor coming to my school.

And so this is a very long time ago. And I remember his story. And years have gone by. I've, you know, I've heard his sermons and some of them have obviously resonated well with me.

But the one that, you know, that I remember is when he told about being the richest caveman. And that's how he started that ministry. Because it was an interesting story, we were able to connect with it. There was an importance to it.

And through that story. And the key thing I would like to just sit in here for a moment is that it was his story. It wasn't something that was made up, but it was authentic. And it was his story that was authentic.

And that story transcends years and years and years and years for me and for so many other people. And it was the foundation in many ways, because he had a book about it, that his ministry was built on. But, you know, keep telling stories and talk about, he's an excellent storyteller. Yeah.

I mean, you look at even the devotionals that they've published, you know, all of these that focus on Amazing facts. Yes. Amazing facts is the talking about facts, but each one of those facts, they, they case it in a story, right? That that's how they communicate.

So it's a, it's a whole ministry built on stories. Yeah. There's, there's examples after examples of story being the thing that makes a ministry memorable, makes a sermon, makes a pastor, makes a teacher memorable because we are, we connect with, with stories. And so that's going to be our first big encouragement for you is this idea of know thyself.

Pay attention to what your story is. Don't discount it and get good at telling it. Practice it. Repeat it.

It's a skill that you can tell a really good story in a very poor way, or you can tell a fairly bland story in a really interesting way. If you notice when we first started out was telling this, you know, silly story of a bunch of friends going out to go get food late at night. It could have been something like, yeah, we went to dinner and it took forever to get our food, but eventually we did. Yeah, the guy.

All right. Same story. Same thing happened, but told without enthusiasm, without that setting the scene and all of that. It makes a difference how you tell the story.

And so, like, what does that look like? You know, somebody's listening to this and they're going, oh, man, but like, I've just got a, you know, this is my ministry. It feels like pretty average. You know, I'm a soup kitchen.

You know, like, how do I how do I use story to, you know, get my message out there? You know, maybe if we can use that as a as a starting point, what would be the tactical advice? I think first off is realize you don't need to narrow it down to just one story. You are allowed to have tens of hundreds of thousands of stories.

So don't be like, what's my story? And worrying about doing just that one thing. Like, no, you can have lots of stories. If you are quickly trying to help communicate what you do, there is a method to this is a three step method to quickly telling your story, because you kind of think of the elevator pitch.

You've heard that term and you've got a short amount of time. You could even compress that even more to this one-liner idea. It's got three components, which also still makes a story when you are expressing your ministry. And this would be something that I would encourage every ministry to practice, to go through and wordsmith this until it feels comfortable.

And it's gonna be one of the shortest stories you've ever told, especially about your own ministry. It starts with identification of the problem. A lot of people struggle with it. Maybe the soup kitchen.

A lot of people in our community do not have enough food. So that's another set. You know, what is the problem that is out there? The second thing, like what do you do to solve that problem?

So every Thursday evening we open the doors of our church and we invite the unhoused to come. and share a meal with us. So that's, that's the second thing you do. And then the third one is then how it feels once that problem is solved so that we can minister not only to their bellies, but to their hearts as well. And we're, you know, changing hearts and minds in our community.

It's something like that. And again, that's off top of my head. It would be, if we really wanted to do that, we'd spend a little more time wordsmithing that and getting it just right. But you see that general narrative of there's a problem, what you do to solve the problem and how it feels once that problem is solved, because every good story needs a resolution, a happily ever after, a feeling.

For a story to be remembered, you need to have your audience feel something. If you have anything you want to share, please jump in. But as you were just chatting, I was just thinking. One of the things that we perhaps neglected or skimmed over it at the beginning that I think is is helpful is to ask us why we want to communicate this in the first place right like what effect does this have what what what is actually possible if we start telling our stories as opposed to when we don't.

Right it simply goes like do you do you want to be impactful I think you want your ministry the work that you're doing your ministry to connect with other people. your ministry needs to grow beyond just you. If your ministry is only just you, then you tell yourself your story. But if you want other people to get excited about the thing you're doing, they need to feel excited. And the best way to communicate that, to share that excitement is through story, that we have a collective thing that we all believe in and that we do together.

And that's the thing I would say would be the most important part. Why you'd want to take the time to focus on story is that you want other people to feel this thing too and to get excited about it. That's very well articulated. The desire to have impact, right?

Anyone who's running a ministry or anyone who's running a church organization. Nobody is doing it because they want to get rich, right? We're all here because we believe in what we're doing, and I should hope so. But that's the objective here.

And so if we want to make an impact, the only way that you do that is by convincing someone to take action. And in the world that we live in today, attention is so diffused because there's so many things craving and demanding attention. We are then in a situation where we need to cut through that somehow. We need to make people desire to prioritize what we're doing.

And the only way that we can do that is by giving them a reason and stories. Give that, give those reasons. And so even if you, anybody can learn to do this. It's like, if you, if you can speak, if you can think, you can tell better stories than what you're doing right now.

And yeah, we believe that that's one thing that we're trying to do for the clients that we work with. Right. And when people come in, we're not just saying, how do we Oh, they want us to build a website for, you know, school or whatever it might be. We're looking at it saying, OK, well, how does this tell their story?

What is this going to do that's going to make that significant difference that moves the needle, not just something that's an art piece. It's something that actually does something for them. So, yeah, we encourage you to take that time to craft it for yourself, because it's very easy to skip over that feature and just get into the work, especially if the work is what you're passionate about. But definitely don't neglect that.

Yeah, 100%. I think to add to that, our brains are trying to be efficient and our brains want to spend as few calories, energy, actually trying to think about something as possible. And if you can simplify that down into one or two very important points. Yes, we also do this.

Yes, we also do this. Yes, we all like... All right, but what is your core focus? What is your core ministry?

If you can get them to be excited about your core ministry, they'll wait around and pay attention to the other things that you're doing, but help people spend as few calories as possible, trying to figure out the thing that you do, the ministry that you are in, and it will be easier for them to get excited about it. Well, I think that's probably a good place for us to wrap this one up. We are going to be producing more of this kind of content. We're going to be having other expert guests who do this well, who are going to be sharing with us as well a bit about their stories and how they shape it in their part of the world and part of the ministry.

So if you enjoy that, please make sure that you're here and you listen to the next episodes. Also share this with any friends that you have that you might think might benefit from this. So we'll leave it there. Adam, thanks for your time.

It's been great. Thank you so much, Luke. Thanks.