STORY=POWER 2b - Small Groups - Character Development

You can enhance the effectiveness of your small group meetings through storytelling. Before we get into looking at the actual application of storytelling in a small group setting, let's look at another aspect of the Story Seat so we can dig a bit deeper into what it means to have a good solid story. If you remember from last time, we have this circle that represents story. Inside the circle we have character, goals, conflict, and values. Each one of those adding to each other creates a very effective story. Today I'd like to focus on character. How do we build character? Because it's so important to have a good character in a story, because if a character is believable, then the audience or the reader will get engaged with the story because they, they like the character. If the character is very unlikable, that also will work. But the character has to be interesting. So how can we create believable, interesting characters? Let's look at 4 different things that if you add this into your character as you're building character in your stories, your character will be fleshed out and will be more developed and interesting. The first is the who/what. Who is your character? What's their name? Names are actually very important. Names tell us things, especially if you think about the Bible. Names often actually meant something. You can give a character in your own story a name with meaning, and then that will enrich your story. Also, what is your character? Is your character human? Is your character a donkey? Is your character an angel? What is your character? If your character is a Bible story character, then what, what kind of person is your character? What era did they come from? What did they look like? Enrich it by knowing who the character was and what kind of attributes the character had. Next, form and function. Basically, what does your character do? What does your character look like? What form does your character take? Is your character really neat and tidy, or is your character shaggy and messy? Is your character— what job does your character have? The function of your character. Is your character a hard worker? Is your character lazy? So how does your character function in their world? So the who, the what, the form, the function, then you can move on to the character's character. Now what I'm talking about is what kind of person, or if they aren't a person, what kind of personality does this person have? Take a snapshot, a one-word snapshot of your character. What would it be? Funny? Sad? Intelligent? Once you have that one-word snapshot of your character's character, you can build the rest of the character around that, remembering to stay true to that core characteristic of your character, and that will enhance the believability and also the ease of telling the story of that character, because you'll remember to always fall back on, "But she was a very happy young girl," or whatever attribute you've given to your character. And then finally, backward-forward, which is what's the backstory of your character? If it's a Bible character, you can actually look if there's details. What happened in the— before the story you're telling in the life of David, or before the story of Gideon in the Bible? What happened before that? What were the other judges like? And you can look at the backstory behind the character. It usually would be the actual character's own life story, but sometimes it might just be the the stories that happened before this character that built the character to who they are. But in your own stories, if you're creating a story and you want to create a backstory, or you want your character to be interesting and believable, a backstory does that brilliantly because suddenly you have a wealth of information in your mind about where that character's been, where they've come from, who they were before they are who they are now, and it enriches the believability of your character because just like you and I, we have a backstory because we're real. So if we want our stories to feel real, we need to give a backstory to our characters, even if we don't tell people the whole backstory. And then forward, look forward. What is the goal of your character? What would your character like to become? What would your character head towards? If your character could be anyone or do anything, where would your character be in 5 years, 10 years? Develop kind of a picture of the character's direction in life, where they've come from, where they're heading, and, and who they are now. And that— those 4 things together, if you really— well, 8 things together will help you enrich and build a strong character, which will give you a strong story. So now let's have a look at a small group setting. What are we gonna do if we come into a small group and we want to captivate people's attention? We want them to get involved in the small group. Well, we know story is the most effective way to capture people's imagination, to get them involved in, in a thought process, because they identify with it and they become interested. But if you just told the story like at the beginning of this workshop where I told the story of the BMW driver and of Matt's reaction to that story, um, saying, "I want to be the BMW driver." If I was to tell both of those stories at the beginning of a small group meeting, that would take 10 minutes. And that's not the way you run a small group. You want to give things in little bite-sized chunks and then let other people be involved as well. So these are 3 key things that I think are very important in a small group. Listen first. Listen, look around, who's there? Listen to their story. And often we ask, "How's your week been? How have things been going?" And you listen to other people, get the group dynamic. And then you'll understand, are the stories I've planned to tell tonight in running my small group, are they going to fit in? Or if they kind of would, how can I adapt the story so that it meets her needs or his need? And you can be thinking about this in the background in your mind while you're listening to them unpack their week or tell their own life stories, and you can think, "Ah, I know a story that will enrich this small group experience." The next one is to add value. Don't play the one-up game in small groups. It's fun when you're sitting around the table with friends and they say, "Oh, you know, I had a horrible accident and this happened," and you say, "Ooh, I had one even worse than that," and you know, we play the one-up game and we keep one-upping each other, which is a common conversation thing that's just a fun way to keep a conversation going. But it's a great way to completely derail a small group because the point isn't to have the best story in the room. The point is to head where you're going with your small group discussion. So try to just add value to the actual content of what it is you're wanting to have happen in your small group this night, so— or this day when you're having your small group. So to add value, look for stories that fit into the, the life of the people that are there And tell stories in a way that doesn't overtake the whole scene. Short stories. And stay on topic. I actually have a challenge I give to myself when I run Sabbath school— or not when I run a Sabbath school class, but when I sit in on one. I'm the Sabbath school director in my conference, and so I go to a lot of Sabbath school classes, and of course they say, "What do you think?" And I've made this deal with myself: I'm not going to say anything more than just one sentence in a Sabbath school class until I have a story or a parable that fits in to what the teacher's trying to say, and I can add value to what that teacher's trying to say in the small group. So even just as a participant in a small group, you can be thinking, "How can I add value to what's happened here?" And finally, ask questions. There's nothing like a good question. We often like to have the answers, and we think, "Oh, if I have good answers to all the questions, then, you know, everything will be settled at the end of the meeting." But really, good questions open up things and they get discussion flowing. And you can run a small group beautifully with 3 questions if you plan them and think about them ahead of time and get a good grasp on the content of where you want to head and then ask questions based on that. Now, when we look back at the story of the BMW driver, if I was going to use that in a small group, I wouldn't tell the 2 stories together. I'd tell them separately. And as I was telling them, I would be thinking to myself, how can I tell these stories in a way that gets people involved? So I'd probably start the small group with an activity. There's an interesting word in Greek, icon, E-I-K-O-N, or we would spell it I-C-O-N. It's the same word. It means image. The icons on your computer are images. Great question I would ask in a small group: when you get double-clicked, what do you open up? That's a fantastic question to lead into a discussion about I want to be the BMW driver. I got double-clicked, I double-clicked the BMW driver, and he opened up this beautiful picture of Jesus. Matt got double-clicked when that dog jumped on him, and he thought, "I wanna be the BMW driver," so it opened up that file on his hard drive, on his computer. So when you get double-clicked, who do you open up? And we know the end goal of the Christian life is we wanna always open up a picture of Jesus. And so how can we connect ourselves through to Jesus so that when we have a moment in time where we're able to share with someone else, we can, and we can show them Jesus? Now, when we're teaching faith, there's 4 aspects I like to talk about, and I think that they're all important aspects of faith. We're good at doing the head knowledge. Do you agree with this? Yes, I agree. Good, then you belong to our faith. But there's also the heart, which is how does this make you feel? How does this give you assurance? How does this give you joy in your life? The heart of faith. Then there's the hands of faith. What does this make you want to do? What does it make you want to become? How does it make you want to change your life or do something new? The hands of faith. And then finally, there's the horizons of faith. How does this change the way you see yourself, or the way you see your God, or the way you see your neighbor? How does it broaden the horizons of what you're looking at? Can build stories on each aspect of those, and those are great topics for a small group. So I would challenge you to enhance the effectiveness of your small group through the power of story.