Sharing our stories…aka…Creative writing…aka…. Genius work

One of my responsibilities as Interim Associate Minister at Speedway Christian Church (DOC) was to provide leadership in the area of Evangelism. In Christian circles…it is the dreaded “E” word. What normally comes to mind is cold calling, like the old Amway, vacuum salesperson…(yes I am just that old!) Or better yet the street preacher standing on the corner handing out tracts. All of these images make my brain hurt. I know that it works for some…but for me… not so much.

I am convinced that evangelism is all about relationships--creating, developing and building relationships where God's love is shared and celebrated.

The “E” word is all about building relationships and not about church attendance. It is about sharing our stories of faith. So, because I love to write, I began to offer a class on writing our faith stories--those stories of God showing up and showing out in our lives. My thought was to create a venue were us church folks could talk about our stories of faith and perhaps even begin to write them down. Then maybe we would be more empowered to share those with others. What I know to be true: When we share our stories it is our faith that is widened and deepened. But a most interesting synchronistic thing happened. The two people who showed up wanted to write. Both of these wonderful women had all of this creative energy ready to be released. The faith stories class morphed into a creative writing class. Week after week these two gifted writers showed up with wonderful writing exercises and our process became genius work.

One writer is a single Mom who said early on…”I feel I have a lot to say about all that I have been through.” She is now blogging and sharing her experiences. The other writer is writing funny meaningful children’s stories. And me, I am just writing again! What was designed to be one thing has transformed into what it was suppose to be in spite of my original design. Even though it was a good design, the really moral of the stories is-- learning to let go of the outcomes. This is a major lesson I am learning on and off of my yoga mat.

Our job is to simple show up and open ourselves up to let God do God! Ultimately our writing process has been about developing relationships. Three women have developed relationships that inspired them to learn how to honor their Divine Creative Spark. When we meet, we do share our stories of faith--faith in the gift of writing that God has so graciously granted to us. We have been empowered to share our gift of writing with God’s people…that is the “E” word to me.