[Propertalk] The Three Stories of Easter - a 'recasting'

[Joe Parrish]

The Three Stories of Easter 
 
Whenever a bad or traumatic thing happens three stories can be told about the experience. 
 
The Victim Story.
This is the Bad Friday story which tells all the ugliness of the bad thing that has happened. 
 
The Survivor Story. 
This is the Holy Saturday and Emmaus road story. We survived the bad thing but life is very different and we have no idea how we will go on. 
 
The Thriver Story. 
This is the Easter story of resurrection. We discover that despite the bad thing that has happened, life in all its fullness goes on. Things are not just different they are transformed. Bad Friday becomes Good Friday, the day when the seeds of new life and possibility were planted and now are yielding the fruit of new life. This is the Easter message: that there is no place we can get to that is beyond the reach of God's grace and the possibility of new life. 
 
Sadly when bad things happen many people and churches get stuck in endless telling and retelling of the victim story. Some may discover they have survived, but over the years the years of struggling to endure takes its toll. Working on having less death will still get you death. 
 
Thriving doesn't just happen it needs to be worked at, first by discovering how God is still here and secondly by joining with God in what God is doing. As the Easter story tells, God doesn't have a survival plan. God has a resurrection plan. 
 
As leaders of the church one of your primary tasks is to shape and hold your congregation's narrative. Are you part of and telling a victim story, a survivor story, or are you co-creating with God and God's people a thriver story?... 
 
http://www.clergyleadership.com/training/leader-prog.html
 
Remember this Easter: Jesus came that we might have life, not less death. 
 
With Easter Blessings
Rob Voyle
Director, Clergy Leadership Institute 
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