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With my own book set to be published by IVPress’s imprint Likewise Books, I have been keeping an eye on the other titles being released in the series.  When I came across “The Story of God, The Story of Us: Getting Lost and Found in the Bible”, my interest was stirred.  Not too long ago I had read another book about the Bible (which shall remain nameless) that left me upset and frustrated.  I was eager to see what author Sean Gladding had to say.

What I found has been one of the most unexpected and wonderful gifts I’ve come across in some time.  What Gladding does is take the whole scope of the Bible narrative and retell it as a story, each chapter unique and compelling, drawing the reader one minute to a fireside in Babylon, the next sitting in the somber candle light in Rome.  While the book can be read by individuals, I have been reading it to our Little Flowers Community small group with stunning impact.

I was thrilled to have the chance to ask Sean a few questions about the book.  I know you will be as excited as I am, so be ready to put in some orders- for yourself, for friends, for Christmas.  This is a true gift to the Church.  Check out the interview:

Jamie Arpin-Ricci: Briefly tell us how this book came into being?  How many years & people have helped develop this resource?

Sean Gladding: Ten years ago I spent a summer with my best friend, Matt Russell, who three years earlier had started a church called ‘Mercy Street’ in Houston, Texas. Most of the community were either unchurched or de-churched, many in recovery from one form of addiction or another, as well as in recovery from bad church experiences. Matt asked me to teach a bible study – the community’s first – one that “gives a sense of the big picture.” I had just finished a course in New Testament Theology, taught by Mary Fisher at Asbury Seminary in which I had been introduced to the idea of the meta-narrative of scripture for the first time. Reading N. T. Wright’s “The Challenge of Jesus” was a watershed moment for me – another conversion of my imagination.

So I decided to explore the meta-narrative with my new friends at Mercy Street. I wrote the study week to week, with much input via email from Mary. What followed was a simply wonderful experience has people who had never cracked open a bible, as well as some who had been reading it all their lives, began to find their own stories caught up in the Story of God as narrated in scripture. I heard from several of them what I have heard countless times since: “How come I’ve never heard this story before?” I was among those who bemoaned how biblically illiterate so many of us in the church are, and here in just 8 weeks I discovered a beautiful way to begin to address that.

When I returned to Communality – my  community in Lexington, Kentucky – there was interest in doing something similar. I was challenged to change the format: instead of talking about the narrative, why not tell it as a narrative? We placed the setting for the Hebrew scriptures as the people of God in exile in Babylon asking, “How did we get here?” And so, each week we joined them in exile, sitting around the fire (a bunch of candles), under the stars (Christmas lights strung across the ceiling) and hearing the stories of our people. Those two experiences were foundational for what has become this book. Over the years my wife Rebecca and I have facilitated groups walking through the Story together, and the questions and insights we have heard have been woven into the narrative as we have continually re-written it.

JAR: The book can obviously be read by individuals, but you have suggested that it is most valuable to be read in community.  Why?

SG: Primarily from our own experience of doing so. For most of the history of God’s people, scripture has been something that has been heard corporately rather than read privately. Receiving God’s word through our ears is a very different experience than receiving it through our eyes. And hearing it with others – especially those not like us – is very important. Rebecca describes the experience like this.

Imagine that scripture is a landscape: what we see is dependent upon where we stand. Our view of the landscape is limited to what we can see from that place, but our view is opened up when we are with others who are standing in a different place than us and who can tell us what they see. And – very importantly – sometimes we are not aware of where we are standing: it takes others to help us see what determines the view we have, a view that has often been shaped by our family, by our church, by our culture. I cannot overstate the richness of hearing the Story together, and then talking about where we find our own stories intersecting, being challenged by and being caught up in this epic narrative.

JAR: How do you find this material is best utilized by groups?  In what way would a group most benefit from it?

SG: For nine years we have been telling the Story over the course of twelve weeks (the twelve chapters of the book). After listening to each chapter, we used art to interact with the Story – in smaller groups drawing pictures of something that struck us as we listened, or that illustrated a question that came up. We would then share these pictures and sculptures with the group, before choosing one to share with the whole group. We collected all the questions and emailed them to the group so that people could hear what others were asking, often discovering that others were asking the same questions. There is something liberating about asking questions we may have been afraid to speak out loud before, or which when we did we were shouted down, only to discover we are not the only ones asking those questions. It is my questions that have led me into a deeper understanding of the Story – and which are fostering a humility with scripture that I lacked earlier in my life.

Another gift the study has given over the years has been the deep and lasting friendships that have formed among those who experienced hearing the Story together. We turned the oral study into the written form of the book with the hope that it will be read aloud as people gather in living rooms, in dorm rooms, in pubs, in laundromats, in church buildings and all the other places people have taken the Story of God and read it aloud up until now.

JAR: What was the hardest part about writing the material?  Which section(s) were most challenging & why?

SG: To be honest, I have loved writing and re-writing the material over the years. The hardest part has probably been trying to keep each chapter short enough to where it takes a maximum of thirty minutes to read it. There is so much more that could be said! It was challenging trying to avoid anachronism – an elder of Israel sitting in exile in Babylon would not be telling the Story as a social Trinitarian! Deciding what to keep in the body of the text, and what to footnote was another challenging part of turning the oral manuscript into a book.

JAR: As we have already mentioned, this material was developed over a long period of time.  Do you see it developing further in the future?  If so, in what ways?

SG: My ears are attuned to new ways of hearing the Story – I am always writing notes for the next re-write! I attended the ‘A Rooted People’ conference hosted by the Englewood community in Indianapolis this past weekend, and I was listening to Fred Bahnson present on the concept of exercising dominion over creation, and all the ways we fail to partner with God in doing that. He quoted Ellen Davis’ observation that in the litany of chapter one of Genesis, the only act of creation that does not end with “…and it was so” was when God gave humanity the charge to, literally, “take mastery among the creatures” – the image of shepherd and flock. The rest of creation would do what God intended – the question of whether humanity would is left wide open. I must have read that chapter hundreds of times and never seen that. Look for that in the second edition! I don’t see the Story getting any longer than twelve chapters – one of the things that has made it so helpful to so many, including myself – is its concise nature. Rebecca and I have often wondered what it would be like to tell the Story for young children – that may be a project we work on down the road.

JAR: There is also a video series based on the book. Tell us about it.

SG: For years I have been joking with my good friend Travis Reed (theworkofthepeople.com) that one day we would find someone willing to pony up to send us to the Near East to film the Story. IVP wouldn’t spring for that(!), but they did fly Travis up to Lexington for a few days to produce a series of short films intended as a resource for people wanting to explore some of the major themes of scripture. Over three days Travis followed me around my neighborhood and downtown Lexington as we discussed those themes in light of the meta-narrative – how important it is to ask where all those stories find their home in the Big Story. We’re hoping that the series (available as downloads and as a DVD) will be a helpful resource for provoking discussion, and an introduction to the idea of the meta-narrative of scripture, as well as to the book.

JAR: Name a few books (other than the Bible) that especially helped challenge & inform this material.

SG: Pretty much everything I’ve ever read by N T Wright. “The Prophetic Imagination” by Walter Brueggemann, as well as his commentary on Genesis in the Interpretation series. “The Epic of Eden” by Sandra Richter. “Genesis: the Story We Haven’t Heard” by Paul Borgman. Joel Green’s commentary on Luke’s Gospel. “Let’s Start with Jesus” by Dennis Kinlaw. Richard Bauckham’s slim volume, “The Theology of the Book of Revelation.” And “Manna and Mercy” by Daniel Erlander. If someone doesn’t want to read the 250 pages of my book, and would prefer a hand written and illustrated version of the metanarrative, go find “Manna and Mercy”!

JAR: Tell us something about yourself- odd and/or unusual- that we might never know without you admitting it.

SG: I didn’t get my license to drive a car till I was 37. (I’ve had a motorcycle license since I was 17.)

JAR: Thanks for taking the time.

SG: Thanks for asking.