(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of "Constructing the Story." Be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the next primary section, "Telling the Story.")

Constructing the Story: Finding the Life

Finally, after you have finished building and sculpting, you as the historian will need to search for the life that animates the congregation and its story. What makes this group of people tick and hum?

As you search for the life of your congregation, track the gospel in its story. Identify the specific ways this group of people has experienced the gospel, responded to it, borne it into the world, lost sight of it, and then experienced its surprise once more. As you do so, the skeleton, organs, muscles, and flesh will begin to take on a life of their own. Watch for the times when the congregation has risked its life to be faithful and for those other times when, in seeking to save its own life, it has almost lost its soul. Identify the parched spiritual times in its life and those when new life burst forth within it.

Just as any body is born, matures, grows old, and dies, so this body of believers has a life cycle. Your congregation was born at a specific time; it came of age. It ages, and some day it will die.

As you discern how this distinctive body has changed over time, its full history—the story of its life—will come into view. This kind of story, when it is well told, can animate a congregation and individuals. As members hear the story and discover the connection between their lives and the many other stories that run through their congregation, they will begin to experience the specific form of grace that comes when the Word takes on congregational flesh.

The congregation's story—when told clearly, fully, and compellingly—will challenge all who read it to see a larger purpose and mission in their comings and goings. They are offered through this mediating story—one that connects individual lives to something much more important and promising—a part in the great story of Christ and his church, of the creative, redemptive, and sanctifying acts of the Lord of history.

The Rev. John Dovinh, Vietnamese Lutheran Church, Seattle, Washington (1985)