I've known Joe Boyd, founder and president of Rebel Storytellers, for a while, but first encountered his latest project—a one-man stage show of the Book of John—here in Cincinnati (be sure to watch the trailer here). I was fascinated by the performance—someone telling the stories of the Bible in a beautiful concert space in the heart of the city, trusting that the stories could stand on their own. It was a beautiful thing to be part of, one April afternoon, along with 1000 others (some Christians, many not). We heard the entire Gospel of John told with emotion and humor, and it felt like it might mean something.
As a pastor, it was encouraging to me to see people genuinely engaged in the story of Jesus outside of the church. Little did I know that it was only the beginning of something much bigger. Recently, I took time with Joe to hear about his passion for story, and why it matters for our churches and culture. – Mandy
Mandy: Tell us little about your story. What led you to take gospel stories to a theater stage?
Joe: This project is connected to my own story of discovery of how I fit into God's kingdom and the church. Growing up, I always wanted to be a pastor. I went to Bible College, and then went to Vegas to plant a church. About four or five years into the church plant I wondered if it was really what I supposed to be doing.
I wrestled with a lot of ideas about what the church really is. Discovering "the theology of the kingdom" made me think about what it means for the kingdom to come now—feeling a deep conviction that church is supposed to be more than a performance. Eventually, I quit my job at the church because I felt like a performer, and didn't see how that could fit with church ministry.
The only other skill set I had was comedy and acting. So I went from church work to performing six nights a week in Tony'n'Tina's Wedding at The Rio Hotel Casino. There I learned that the kingdom was in the casino and in the church. I saw God using me in a different way outside of the church. I was able to perform and not feel guilty about it.
I was successful in the acting world, but not enough to make it a full career, so I started speaking at a recovery group on Friday nights in a church in Los Angeles. It was good to teach in a church again, after five years away. I felt like I was a different person and had had more real life experience and had some years to heal from what had felt like ministry failure with the church plant. Then a mega-church in Cincinnati called. I didn't want to go back to Ohio or work for a mega-church, but after six months, I felt my heart change and two months later I was back on staff with a church.
I thought it was time to grow up and settle into pastoral work. It worked for around three years. The church had let me continue to produce a couple of movies on the side and I felt like it was time for me to step back into that full-time. So for the second time in my life I made the transition out of vocational ministry and back into the marketplace.
We started producing movies. Our mission was to tell stories that spark hope and action and we made feature films, some TV work, and some client work. Then we decided to do this stage show, "The Gospel of John," this year. For me it very clearly felt like the merging of everything I've done. I get to tell the story of Jesus and not be ashamed as a performer.
Tell us about "The Gospel of John."
John has my go-to stories—the ones I use when I travel and speak. They're very comfortable to me. I take in the written text and paraphrase it in a way that people can understand it. I can see the stories clearly in my imagination.
It was a 2 hour, 15 minute one man show, performed twice in one day. That was a lot to take on, but it was received even better than I'd hoped. Lots of people I know came to the show, including Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, and agnostic friends. I don't think it converted anyone, but they all had something very personal and positive to say at the end. My Muslim friend knew nothing about Jesus before this. He said "I never heard this story before!" My Buddhist friends resonated with John's idea of life. My agnostic friend said, "I still don't believe in God but I would listen to you tell any bible story." I also had both conservative and liberal Christian friends who came, people who probably would not accept one another as "real Christians." Here they were united in owning the stories as their own. It was a genuinely safe place.
I get tired of that pressure we put on people to change their worldview. If it's supposed to happen, it will happen through the Spirit and the Word. I've released myself from the pressure to do that for people.
You closed the event with: "My hope for you is that wherever you come from and wherever you are you would leave this auditorium and regardless of what you believe this story to be, that it would send you seeking life. Because that's what we all want. We all want real life."
Yes—there's such power in story. The neuroscience around story is popular in the business world at the moment. When you're hearing a story and you're into it, your brain isn't wired to have a counter-point. So in issues of religion that are often so divisive, part of our hope is that we can tell these stories to engage people . . . so they just get lost in the story. When someone comes to our events, they can decide for themselves if it's myth or propaganda, but the important thing is that they hear the story.
There's been growing interest in narrative theology in academia for the last 40 or 50 years—this idea of living within the story of God, Israel, Jesus, and the church as our primary theological statement. That captivated me.
Living within the story is even deeper than telling or hearing the stories but I don't think we can do it without the telling or hearing. Maybe we as human beings are designed to hear and tell stories. Have we lost the foundational skill of just standing up and telling a story?
As a story-teller, what do you have to say to church communicators?
Preachers are in a world where nobody ever—except maybe politicians—has people come sit in a room and stare at them for half an hour. It's kind of outdated but it's also a weighty thing. As preachers and communicators in the church, people are coming to you. We ought to be telling them stories. That's what makes us engaging, what makes people remember.
Tell more stories. Tell the stories of God, Israel, Jesus, and the church. Make sure you tell one of those stories every time you get up to speak. It's easy to think that if we don't read the text as printed we might misuse or leave something out or add something to it. But I think we've overcorrected on that. When it comes time to figure out what they believe, or make a decision, people are going to remember the stories.
Mandy Smith serves as lead pastor at University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is the author of Making a Mess and Meeting God: Unruly Ideas and Everyday Experiments for Worship
