Story

At the moment I'm preparing some work for Australia.

Not just refugee ministry stuff, but also thinking through some other important issues and how to communicate them effectively.

Far from being an isolated area of missiology, my engagement with refugees has so many points of cross over into the mainstream praxis of the theology of everyday life.
One of the big awakenings of the past few years has been the often overlooked central place of the story as a, no - the Biblical genre.

I'm struck again that both the Old and New Testaments begin with the phrase "In the Beginning". Doesn't that sound much like "Once upon a time"?

Many times, myself included, preachers have battled the urge to demythologise, or extract from the story what God has really given us.

Almost like a reverse osmosis system, we have too often reckoned that the story has been in the way of the truth or a mere conveyer of what God really wanted to deliver to us. When very often the story is not only the messenger, but the message itself.
For example when Jesus yelled at the disciples to allow the children to push through the crowds to see him. Sure, we can extract principles from that. Yes Jesus loves children. Yes we must have faith like a child. But isn't there wonder in the story itself. Just consider the scene. The most influential world leader in history with a limited time frame to work in, and a full appointment book, publicly corrects his friends to allow kids to be near him, use his time.

Maybe it is because of the way modern culture has hijacked the words 'story' and even 'myth' and and loaded them meaning leaning toward fiction. Maybe using those words sometimes embarrasses preachers. The challenge then is to venture into this epistemology a little deeper, push through the reluctance, and speak with enough eloquence to allow these words to defend themselves.

The tradition I am from has not too subtly distanced itself from the emotive and heart connection of the story.
In some cases for very good reasons.
Yet I fear we lose something life giving when we dichotomize the head from the heart. It was a foreign idea to scripture writers. Thats why they had such a hard time translating locative words of emotion to organs like the stomach and bones - we use the idea of the heart when referring to the emotive. Maybe its just me but surely words of life cannot be divided - cognitive and emotion or mind and heart.
Surely when Jesus was explaining the greatest commandment in terms of soul, heart and mind and strength, he was emphasising totality, not divisability.
To use the words of someone I know well, either extreme is a place of dysfunction or in this situation, of disconnection. Some may see the need to combine into their practice of all things Jesus, more emphasis on the amazing wisdom and sense that he taught. After all, he berated those who bobbed around on the sea moved to and fro by the currents and the wind.

Others, like me need to self correct a little more toward the heart because the gospel is so much more than a combined set of propositions.