Ron King on Narrative Worship and Story Maps

Ron King is an author and retired pastor who provides pulpit supply. He founded and directs Sidebar Stories, an organization helping ordinary people gather and tell stories that “change the conversations we all live by.” King has also worked as a family therapist, hospice chaplain, restorative justice facilitator, and spiritual director. He led a 2024 Vital Worship, Vital Preaching Grants project funded by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship (CICW). In this edited conversation, King explains how narrative worship and a specific story format can renew congregations.

What inspired you to propose this grant?

While doing pulpit supply in many churches in New Jersey and metro Philadelphia, I noticed how many congregationsexpress shame that their church is no longer what it was. Their historic congregations are smaller and draw mostly people over age fifty. They report grief, fear, and discouragement about only being able to pay a part-time pastor. 

Rev. Tamieka Nicole Gerow told me that she noticed the same thing. She is an itinerant preacher, worship leader, conference speaker, and facilitator. We talked while co-leading a pastors’ prayer summit at Harvey Cedars Bible Conference, a Christian retreat center on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. I had already done CICW grants about collecting worship stories from children and helping worshipers learn to give testimony through storytelling and visual art. My conversation with Tamieka confirmed my idea to take the next step to help small congregations cultivate the practice of identifying and witnessing to God’s work in their communities. 

Would you briefly describe the grant?

We trained pastors and church leaders from five American Baptist churches in New Jersey to practice narrative worship. Tamieka facilitated two retreats with me. In the first one, we trained people to gather stories and testimonies about God’s work, wisdom, and will in their congregations. We also taught a story-map format to recognize patterns in what God has done and is doing in their churches. Coaches met with worship teams. Pastors preached three sermons on these themes, and worshipers shared their testimonies in worship and at other church events. At the final retreat, churches described how what they’d learned changed the way they carry out their missions. Each church held a final celebration dinner.

What’s the difference between narrative theology, narrative preaching, and narrative worship?

Narrative theology and narrative preaching are academic subjects. Narrative theology is a way of doing theology that treats scripture as a story that shapes Christian identity. It studies the stories of scripture to better understand and describe who God is and how God acts in the world. Narrative preaching is a homiletical method. It proclaims the gospel through biblical or contemporary story form to draw listeners into the meaning of the text. Narrative theology and narrative preaching are both important.

However, I see narrative worship as less concerned with increasing our comprehension of God and more concerned with encountering God through the stories we are living and receiving. Its focus is not only on biblical stories, but also on the stories we live day by day. Narrative worship occurs when stories come together in ways that disrupt, reorder, and deepen our experience of God and ourselves, often without warning or control. It helps us focus on the stories that shape us—the ones we inherit, the ones we live, and the ones that quietly change us.

How did you collect stories, and which questions worked well? 

Churches collected stories through small groups, triads, dyads, and one-on-one interviews. Leaders asked questions like “Why did you come to this church? Why do you stay here? What’s the most significant thing that’s happened in this church?” Very often people were apologetic as they compared the church’s glory days—choirs, Sunday school, youth groups, high attendance—to now. But these stories helped them see how God has worked in their church.

Some members went back into church records to learn about things like a church fire, conflict, ministry failure, or once-thriving ministries. Talking with long-time members who steward church memories brought out the wisdom God revealed through those experiences.

Finally, church members asked each other, “What might be God’s will and wishes for us? What stories indicate what God might want for us?” Meanwhile, pastors preached on biblical texts that show how God communicates through past and present life stories. We also asked grant participants to look for ways that human weakness (pride, desire for control, deceit, anger) has distorted or might distort our stories and worship. 

How do you find a congregation’s oldest stories? 

Many extended families have a person who collects stories. My kids and grandkids never knew my grandfather. He was a Kentucky farmer for whom God was not an idea or doctrine but an ever-present companion who walked with him through the corn and tobacco fields. I’m the one who owns and stewards my grandfather’s devotion to Christ. 

Just like family members who collect stories, every church has someone who can tell you about the stained-glass windows or who was pastor fifty-five years ago. Even people considered to be gossips can be natural church historians. In churches we often think about who’s a good teacher, giver, or singer. We should also look for the people who carry a wealth of information about their congregation.

Three people at one church talked about a fire that had burned down their church building. Forty years later, people were still speculating that it was burned on purpose for insurance. So the three people decided to ask around about what people had learned from the fire and its aftermath. I’m a family therapist as well, so I know the value of exploring family secrets and legacies.

What is a story map?

It’s a framework for putting people’s stories into. For the grant, we taught the PHD pattern—Possibility, Hurdle, Discovery—to pay attention to stories unfolding in lives, congregations, and the Bible. We assume we already know how stories work because we’ve been telling them since childhood. But being intentional about their structure can awaken us to what really matters. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann described this same movement as orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. Aristotle named it unity of action, reversal (peripeteia), and recognition (anagnorisis). Different words, same wisdom.

We assume we already know how stories work because we’ve been telling them since childhood. But being intentional about their structure can awaken us to what really matters.

Can you give an example of a biblical story using your PHD story map?

The way we remember the life of Jesus fits this pattern. Incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection are a holy possibility, hurdle, and discovery woven into history. Yet recognizing a story pattern takes time as you tell it and hear others tell it back to you. The prophet Joel foretold the Spirit’s release. Five hundred years later, Jesus died, was resurrected, and ascended. When Peter told this story in his Pentecost sermon, people experienced the miracle of each hearing him in their own tongue. Only then did they comprehend the prophecy of God’s Spirit being poured out.

How about a personal story?

One of my first PHD stories happened when I was eight years old. On my way to school, I spotted a frozen hill and imagined the possibility of sliding down it at full speed. The hurdle came quickly: a large oak tree at the bottom of the hill. I crashed into it. Bloody and shaken, I limped into my classroom convinced I was on my own.

Then came discovery. My teacher saw me, cared for me, and tended to my injuries with more gentleness than I expected. In that moment, I realized the world held more safety and kindness than I had imagined. Gratitude flooded me—not only toward my teacher, but toward something larger that seemed to accompany me from the hill to the classroom. I didn’t have words for it then, but awe was present. The schoolroom became a sanctuary.

How does following a story map pattern reveal connections between God’s stories and ours?

American Baptist Churches usually celebrate communion monthly. Many of our grant participants told their stories from the communion table. When we see God in what happened last week in church, we realize that wow, we are part of something bigger. This evokes awes and changes lives, how people worship, and how they perceive their church’s mission. 

Also, as people have grown more comfortable telling, hearing, and retelling stories, they’ve learned more about each other. They know how to pray for each other. Passing the peace often becomes the lifeblood, as people take time to ask about a health challenge, a daughter’s recital, or a grandson’s big game.

Can you give examples of collected stories or story maps?

Many stories were personal to the churches and not meant to be made public beyond the church. But here’s a story I collected for my book Pure and Simple: Advice on Worship from Young People. (Note that the book is advice from, not to or about, young people. A nine-year-old boy told me how excited he’d been to receive a Bible. He brought his Bible to church with notebooks and colored pencils. That was the possibility. He pictured the hurdle as a preacher way up high with a word bubble that said, “Blah, blah, blah.” The young boy couldn’t relate to the sermon. But then he told me he’d discovered that God can talk to you even if your pastor doesn’t.

How did congregations use the stories, and how did their stories change people?

In worship and other events, people shared personal and congregational memories about past and present church experiences. Pastors and worship teams wove the stories together through sermons, testimonies, and other worship elements or church events. When people shared their stories in testimony format, it helped them celebrate what they’d learned about God’s activity in their congregation. One participant church collected stories of how they used to have a ministry of feeding homeless people. Remembering this moved them to start doing it again.

How does worship change when people tell stories in worship?

Three churches commented on practical changes that occurred in their corporate life or in individuals because of the narrative worship experience. This is evidence that worship is not meant just to be a time of praise, but that praise should be a catalyst for transforming our lives.

The impact of worship is not always immediately seen. Because of stretching the project over a year and each church using three weeks to experience narrative worship (in addition to months of preparation), some results were seen only in hindsight. One church gathered a fuller narrative of a leadership conflict. They also looked at biblical stories with similar dynamics. As a result, members in conflict or estranged for years were able to reconcile and support each other.

Can you suggest visual ways to share stories?

At our grant retreats, Eric Hoheisel provided graphic documentation of stories through story boards. He is the associate regional pastor with American Baptist Churches of New Jersey. A chalk artist did a visual presentation of a Bible story. Some churches adapted the visuals for their own worship services.

Calvary Baptist Church in Hopewell, New Jersey, is a small church that took part in the grant. A woman who’d collected the church’s stories stood at the edge of the sanctuary with a ball of yarn. For about half an hour she shared congregational and biblical stories and used the yarn to connect people in the stories. Bound together by yarn, everyone walked to the front of the sanctuary to place the tangled yarn on the cross. They reused the yarn to decorate the church. And for Easter, they worked it into a pulpit banner to make visible how their lives were caught up in God’s story.