YPT Podcast Episode 34: Storytelling the Bible (Kendal Conner)

How do we engage students with the storyline of Scripture? GenZ is the first truly post-Christian generation, and many of them are unfamiliar with the stories in the Bible. How can youth workers invite students to embrace the rich truth and message of Scripture by inviting them into the biblical story? 

• What do you mean by Bible Storying, and how did you learn this? 

• Could you give us an example of Bible Storying that you might teach in youth group? 

• Why is this an effective way to invite students into the story of the gospel? 

• How often do you use this approach to teaching in your teaching calendar? Is there some element of this in your weekly message, or is it an occasional approach? 

• If someone wanted to get started, what recommendations and resources would you share with them? 

Excerpt from this Episode

Could you give us an example of Bible Storying that you might teach in youth group? 

Obviously, next week is going to be getting us into Holy Week, right? We are starting next week, and the story that we're doing is the Last Supper. And then the week after that, we'll do the crucifixion. And then the week after that, we'll do the resurrection.

So we did the little individual stories of the miracles of Jesus, life of Jesus, and now we're getting into the death and resurrection of Jesus. So what we did is, I have these stories and I have recruited in our leaders to be a part of this.

An example of what it looks like is a leader is the one who to initially shares the story. So I've encouraged our volunteer leaders to memorize whatever story they're sharing. I try to give them obviously not insane chunks of it, stories that are maybe 12 to 15 verses.

And so what they will do is they will come up and I tell the students, the main premise of Bible story is to first listen, just listen to the story. So the leader will recite the story from memory and will tell them the story; just sharing the story, telling them the story. So they'll listen.

And then after the leader tells them the story, we break into smaller groups and they're asked to recite the story. So the smaller groups of maybe four or five students can bounce off of one another, but they do the best that they can to reiterate what they just heard.

Then after the story's been shared, the story's been recited, then they open up the scriptures to the story and they have somebody read it out loud. So at that point, the students have interacted with the story three times already.

Then after that is when they do a normal kind of just inductive study of the story. The leaders will walk them through coma questions in general of context observation method, a little bit of the application too, and they'll spend about 30 minutes learning the story because before we can give it, we have to learn it for ourselves and put it into practice ourselves. They will do that and that’s a normal weekly study for Bible story: you share it, recite it, read it, and then you study it.

Our students will do that for about two to three weeks, so get a bank of two to three stories, and then when they leave their homework, and I kind of recruit parents to be a part of this, their homework is that they have to share the story at least once that week. So that can be with their mom, their dad, their siblings, a friend, whoever, but they have to share the story and see how much they can remember from it. And then they do that for about two to three weeks. And then on our fourth week, we do a review.

About this Episode

Kendal Conner is the Director of Sunday Schools at Redeemer Fellowship in Kansas City. She also writes curriculum for Rooted Reservoir and is a co-leader for the Student Leadership Cohort with Gospel-Centered Family.  

• Read Kendal’s article: Bible Storying in a Post-Christian Generation (Rooted Ministry)

• John Walsh, The Art of Storytelling

• Phil Collins, The Abide Bible Study Course

• IMB resource for Oral Bible Storying 

• Full list of stories in the Bible: Biblestories.org 

Join YPT's Facebook group: @youththeologian (make sure you answer the membership questions)

Follow YPT on Twitter: @youththeologian

Follow YPT on Instagram: @youththeologian

YPT has published an ebook that's a free download for subscribers! Youth Ministry is Theological Ministry captures the essence of Youth Pastor Theologian in one ten-chapter book, written by six different contributors from across America, Mexico, and the UK. 

Please share YPT's podcast and our articles with your friends, and leave a rating/review on your podcast subscriber. You can contact us with any questions and recommend both topics and guests on our website's Submissions Page.