“vital role of the imagination in spiritual formation is to help a young person make meaningful connections between the church, the world,… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“The Bible-as-story works. It works in all the ways that story itself works: in offering transcendence, identity, intimacy, timelessness, wonder, and so… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Something more is going on with Jesus’ storytelling than clarification or embellishment: he’s out to rock our world.” — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Catechesis means impressing upon youth a Life, not a religion. —KENDA DEAN AND RON FOSTER” — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Like fish, when metaphors get old, they go bad,” writes Christian poet Jeanne Murray Walker,9 and nowhere is that more apparent than… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Somehow the church has forgotten what it knew for so long: story goes beyond simply illustrating some spiritual point or other; it… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Youth are natural-born storytellers. Our task in discipleship training is to steer them into a particular storytelling tradition—that is, the narrative, language,… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Story is one of the most powerful ways we pattern our world and discover its meaningfulness. It goes beyond mere embellishment of… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Christians swim in metaphor like fish in the sea. Spiritual formation requires some measure of analogical or imaginative ability, since we are,… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“The Christian community first came up with theological abstractions because eventually we had to speak in shorthand about the complexity of God’s… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“When engaging youth with the Bible-as-story, we must be wary of our impulse to “clarify” what’s happening in a given narrative, to… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Religious language,” write the authors of Soul Searching, “is like any other language: to learn how to speak it, one needs first… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Contrary to the cavalier attitude many pastors and religious educators take on this point, the Bible’s narrative ingredients do matter for how… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“The lesson is this: When the road gets dark and all hope seems lost, there's nothing to do but keep going. We,… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; which means that if the rest of us want to get close to God, we… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“It's a theme born out of the Christian faith rather than a pagan understanding of the universe. Both views agree that we… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“But at some point it becomes obvious that, ultimately, the adventure of faith is the most sensible thing to do, and in… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“The Bible-as-narrative takes precedence over our attempts to express Christian belief in propositional or abstract terms, which is to say the stories… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“To respect someone means to treat their ideas, personal space, belongings, and needs as equal in importance to your own, while to… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“be fully immersed in the baptismal waters of the Christian faith takes the entire pool of the worshiping community.” — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“As we already said, authors receive their ideas from somewhere; and in the case of holy scriptures, that somewhere is the mind… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“The youth-pastor-as-bard is charged with expressing the language, narrative, and culture of the kingdom to listeners who think they already know what… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“every church can treat each discipleship class and each worship service as an opportunity for continual rehearsal of what the words, stories, symbols, rituals,… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Just because your faith is shaken doesn’t mean the faith is shaken. The eternal truths of the Kingdom aren’t altered or affected by the… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Storytelling is our task with the next generation, and it starts with loving the story ourselves and telling it as though we believe it—because… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; which means that if the rest of us want to get close to God, we seek them… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“There’s nothing more ridiculously juvenile than people thinking they have to be grown up and serious when it comes to living the Christian life.” — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“if there is no light by which we see, no Great Story that illumines our days—and no Storyteller—then we have no source by which… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the more enduring story, rather than the story that… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”16” — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“Tell me a story,” says the poem by Robert Penn Warren. “In this century, and moment, of mania . . . Tell me a… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“If imagination, as we’ve said, is the “region of discovery,” story is the wardrobe door, sending our young people “further in” and “still further… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“While the Witch plays her pawn, the King sacrifices Himself, and to all appearances, the game is over. But the Lion has one last… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
“In short, you can’t have the truths without the Truth. Either Jesus is telling the truth about Himself, or He is lying about everything… — Sarah Arthur Copy Share Image
