Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / The Power of Story || Interview with Nate Morgan Locke || SLP372

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The Power of Story || Interview with Nate Morgan Locke || SLP372 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Thomas Thurrigood.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I am assistant media producer at Speak Life.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're wondering what an assistant media producer does, well, I am assistant to the media producer.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited to be introducing this episode today.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's an interview with Nate Morgan Locke, who is a new member on the Speak Life team.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: But today he will be Nate Morgan Unlocked because he will be talking about the Foundry Unlocks, which is a new thing that Speak Life is doing, essentially to open up our training to more people.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Glenn and Nate will be talking about storytelling and the great story and Jesus.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope you enjoy the episode.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do subscribe to the Speak Life Podcast on your podcatcher of choice.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Things like leaving a rating and a review really help us get seen and heard by more people.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, I will hand over to Glenn and Nate.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_06: If there is this true myth, and if there is an accounting for the existence of story because of who God is, what does this mean for how we conduct ourselves and what can we create off the back of it?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, hello, Nate Morgan Locke.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_06: Hello, Glenn Scribbler.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_06: What is your middle name?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_06: So I have two middle names.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_06: James Hamden.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: Gosh.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: You've got five names then.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_06: So Nathan James Hamden Morgan Locke.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: So posh they named him five times.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_06: I mean I've I've I added one of those myself.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_06: Did you?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_06: So Kat and I were I was Locke and she was Morgan, then when we got married, we combined the two.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_06: Just for search engine optimization reasons, I just thought plain old Nathan Locke just wouldn't get the hits.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: And you thought no hyphen?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_06: No hyphen.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_06: I I was gunning for an exclamation mark after the Locke.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_06: I thought it could be like Oliver, the musical.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: Morgan question mark?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_06: If you can add your own punctuation to your name, what would you add?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_06: That's the question.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it would be a question mark, wouldn't it?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: Everything.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: Everything is up for grabs with Glenn Scrivener.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_06: Glenn Scrivener?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_06: Well maybe that's the Australian thing.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody's got a question mark, hey.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: So you you've been involved in youth work for twelve, fifteen years.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um all up.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um why should we invest in youth work, do you reckon?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_06: Um huh.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I I'm not sure I know I necessarily know that.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_06: I know that young people are people and that they need the gospel and that culturally we have bracketed them out.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_06: And we're very good at stratifying culture and saying, well, this is naughts to threes, threes to fives, fives to sevens, seven's to elevens, eleven to fourteen, forty to eighties, university age.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_06: So we do that and therefore we target it because of our thinking.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_06: And the every one of those ages is just as valuable as any other in terms of doing it.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_06: There's anecdotal evidence as well about just the number of people who come to faith before the age of 18, which you could then use as an argument to say that's why we should have targeted youth ministry.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_06: I think from a very from a very personal point of view, youth ministry is where I was able to develop my creative evangelistic gifts because we were doing uh holiday clubs, youth and children's work, holiday clubs every year when I was at the All Souls Clubhouse around Easter time, and so we had the freedom to to prepare the teaching and the theme and the activities and all that sort of stuff early on in ministry, lots of responsibility and and given you know a lot of rope to hang ourselves on, if you like, but given those opportunities which helped me in my to see connections between creative ideas or stories and the theology that I was learning at the same time.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah, I what sh ought to be done with these terrible teenagers or these uh preteens and uh new issues that they have.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_06: I I yeah, we that's probably I might need to think more about that, but but in terms of my own experience, it was what if we what what does it look like to tell the gospel on a boat?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_06: If you have a story about a boat, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_06: What's a gospel story about a boat?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_06: Or what's a story about a castle?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_06: Medieval.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_06: Tell me the gospel a gospel story in the in the in the dark ages or the middle middle ages.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_06: Dark ages.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_06: What are these dark ages?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: They weren't actually dark, as you'll find out in my upcoming book.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_06: Um so yeah, or or we did one, Who's the King of the Jungle?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_06: And it was called Rainforest and R-E-I-G N.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_06: And then we had um there was one that was set in a newspaper office.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_06: Right, which you don't think, okay, how kids are gonna but okay, now we have loads of of opportunities to to explore the relationship between storytelling and theology and to say, how can you are you just gonna do the the have a messianic figure who comes in after things have gone wrong and then dies to save the day, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_06: Are you gonna do that?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_06: You can do it a couple of times, yeah.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_06: After a while, you start to actually you lose some of the gospel because you're so fixated on one sort of side of it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_06: And creatively it just becomes this formula, which is like, okay, so now we need the It's like Hollywood and the Marvel films.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's like okay.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_06: Turn the Joseph Campbell crank, yeah, out it comes.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_06: Um but we did the but one one option was to do what if we had five different episodes in which one character enacts an an aspect of the gospel, so some part of satiriology.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_06: So it might be okay, let's do adoption.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_06: You know, what what would that look like in this context?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_06: Something to illustrate that.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_06: And so, yeah, that sort of stuff, um Which you wouldn't feel the freedom to do if it wasn't kids.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_06: No, and and which is weird.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't it?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, really.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_06: It's so bizarre that we parents and well adults will watch and read and listen to fiction all the time.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_06: And yet somehow, because the it's like we we we creativity has a time an age limit on it.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_06: And then, well, we might do a sort of themed student mission week, events week.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_06: We might do one of those.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then once you graduate, it's like, yeah, leave that behind.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_06: And yet we're all watching hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of TV shows and um and films.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: So Yeah.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: I was interviewing um Andrew Wilson the other day, and and he said, you know, the the best thing that ever happened to his preaching was that he was thrown in at the deep end with uh I think it was like the seven to eleven year olds.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: And he was he was told by you know the leader of the Sunday school, like you have to illustrate every point that you make with uh a visual aid, and this and this is what you need to do.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: And Andrew Wilson continues to do that, you know, as a preacher, yeah, to grown-ups as well.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: And he's it's it's absolutely the most um it's it it was the biggest breakthrough he has had in terms of his preaching, but he was only allowed to, he was only forced to do it because somebody said uh they're seven-year-olds, so they they think visually.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: You're like, well, I think I think 40 seven-year-olds is a good one.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_06: And it's an interesting thing, because I think I mean maybe people are wired very, very differently from each other, but when you read a book or you listen to an audiobook, because just someone tells you a story or an anecdote, you're forming a mental image of what that is like.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and we have the the abilities and we can develop those gifts to tell people stories which capture their imaginations, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_06: Where you you've basically taken over their mind's eye and you are showing them something.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_06: Now, you know, you can make arguments about you know um how many different versions of of Harry Potter do people have, and then you have the film, and then of course, everyone's forced to think of Daniel Ratcliffe.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_06: And that that I think is a you know is is a challenge.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_06: But with good storytelling, with good description, with vivid imagery, yeah, you can you you can give people something they've actually constructed themselves and which they will sort of own in a way.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_06: And so try I've I've often done that in my preaching, is actually to develop completely fictional, so making them up and telling telling the congregation, I'm making this story up to illustrate this.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't stolen this from JD Greer.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_06: This is not something that happened to me or something that my kids did.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_06: This is something that I'm and I'm I'm saying to you, let's imagine there is a woman called Joanne.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_06: And Joanne goes out for a walk one day, and what could happen to her?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_06: Well, this could happen to her, or that could happen, or she could meet this person, and then because of that, something else could happen.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_06: I've got a story for this, but it's not going anywhere.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_06: The point is I'm picturing her.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_06: You're you're you're you only have to give people a little bit of information and they start to develop that themselves.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_06: Now, if we're happy as preachers to draw from the fictional, you know, the playbox of Disney or of Netflix and say, Hey, has anyone seen that show on Netflix?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_06: Uh remember that scene where this happened.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_06: And then the people who've seen it imagine what it looked like on the screen.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_06: And the people who haven't seen it, then you have to describe it for them.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_06: It's like it didn't really happen.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_06: So why is other people's fiction okay?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah but then we would never even dream of doing that.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_06: Now we might not feel you know, preachers might not feel they've got the the ability to do that.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_06: But in terms of stretching our ability to communicate and uh and developing our ability to to capture the imagination, that's something we should be trying to do.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, totally.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because I mean, if you make up a story, um, you are tapping into the imaginative kind of realm of everybody in the in the audience.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas if you're just tapping into have you seen that popular Netflix show, you're tapping into a subsection of that.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: And and it's almost as though, okay, there's a popularity out there that I want to piggyback on.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas if you're telling a story, that there is an imaginative kind of force that like unites us all.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_06: And and what's brilliant is everyone who needs to be able to connect to this story is in the room listening to the story.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_06: I'm not asking you to remember something that you may or may not have engaged with in the past.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_06: Right now, we're thinking about this particular scenario.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_06: And I think one of the challenges that we can face is people when we talk about stretching people or making people pay attention when and and and work to listen to a a sermon, right?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_06: We often think, well that's that's that's taking notes, it's sort of being able to to relay the points afterwards.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_06: Um which can be it can be valuable, but at the same time, if you have had to think it through, if you've had to imagine the situation, yeah, your brain is gonna hold on to that in a way that it wouldn't do if you know it was it three points B L P.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_06: So I think there's something about our anthropology which means that we can be missing Doctrine of Man, people, doctrine of man, yeah.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_06: So so we're missing out this this part of our humanity which has been divinely appointed to us, and we're not we're not using we're not taking that captive for Christ.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_06: We're not using our opportunity to do it.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: So that that brings us to a couple of like CV points for Nate Morganlark.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: And and one would be um so you worked for Christianity Explored Ministries and uh you wrote and presented Soul, which is sort of the youth Christianity explored um thing.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but then you also co-wrote and co-presented Life Explored.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it seems to me that your work there in terms of storytelling was really coming to the fore, you and Barry Cooper in particular.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um tell tell for people who haven't seen the Life Explored videos, um tell us what they are and what you were um what you were going for.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_06: So so those videos, um those sessions have two videos in them.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_06: The first video is a narrative film, so a short film about some fictional situation.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_06: Um and then the second video is a sort of direct biblical exposition teaching of that.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_06: Um and I think what we what we wanted to do was to use stories um to get people to to approach a topic or an idea from a different perspective in a sort of slightly indirect sort of way.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_06: Um to basically say, What if you just heard this?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_06: How would you react?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_06: What's your concern?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_06: What what's what are you pleased about at the end of this story?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_06: What are you annoyed about?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_06: What has has moved you through the story?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_06: It's stirred you in some particular way.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_06: And then to sort of ask, well, why might that be the case?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_06: What might be in you that that's sort of responding in that way?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_06: And what might there be about the God of Scripture which which brings about a sort of subversive fulfillment of that or uh uh or uh or accounts for that in you your your your thing.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah, those those stories were you know, there's one in India, there's one in Japan, there's one set in at space, there's um one on in sort of Californian suburb, uh there's a prospector looking for gold back in the 1849 gold rush or something.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_06: So there's there's there's all these different locations across the globe and time periods that we're tapping into, but in order to sort of give you something that might provoke some thinking and bring out some kind of reaction.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_06: And I I you know I'm I'm very very pleased that I was able to be part of that.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_06: I loved doing it.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_06: Um could we have done some of them better than others?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_06: Is that if I ever finished something and not thought about it?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_06: No, yeah, yeah.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_06: Um but yeah, just really, really exciting to be part of storytelling in that way.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah and just using gifts.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, again, a breath, a breath of fresh air, and um yeah, telling it slant and getting getting people to think think again.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um And in the last four years you've gone to Philadelphia to study your Masters of Divinity with Westminster Theological Seminary.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh why did why did you do that?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_06: Um well because story isn't just something that I think about, though I obviously do, um, and it's not something I'm just interested in studying, it's actually the it's an inescapable part of the way that I look at life.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_06: So in 2017 I thought I'm kind of running on fumes theologically a bit.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_06: I you know, I had some really good training in the first part of my ministry, but I just feel like I'm I'm slightly ab just to repeat myself and to say, and I think this is the way that it is.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_06: Um and I'm not a sort of voracious reader, and I'm not gonna sort of follow all the debates online about various systematic theological developments and things.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_06: So I thought, well, this is a good period of our lives when we could go and and have a chapter, you know, abroad, elsewhere.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_06: And so I thought, well, this is an adventure, and where else says adventureland to me than the United States?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_06: And it's you know, it was a great place for us to live as a family, and then to come back and start a new one.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_06: Um but yeah, ri I suppose really it's just that I'm constantly thinking of m life as as a story which is sort of unfolding that I'm a part of, yeah.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_06: Um you know, as well as the great meta-narrative of the gospel being the thing we're all part of.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_06: And so my own experience of life is is in this thing that seems quite like a story, seems narrative.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I might just cheekily jump in here if that's all right.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you're enjoying this episode so far.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: If what's being discussed interests you, the intersection of storytelling, creativity with the gospel, that's certainly what attracted me to Speak Life in the first place.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if that interests you as well, I really recommend going to speaklifefoundry.com and you can find out about all the new training options we have for you.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: It has never been easier to experience some learning with Speak Life, and you will be able to explore exactly the things that are being talked about here.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy part two of this discussion, and I will catch you on the other side.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: And you found a little niche for yourself, very little niche called uh a reformed mythologist.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: Reformed mythologist.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: What on earth is a reformed mythologist?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_06: Well, so it was a joke from um when I was with our dear friends Cooper and Carey, having words with them, and I talked about story and the Genesis's story and all sorts of things about mythology and and fairy tales and whatever with them.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_06: And then I just thought, if I was known as something, I think it'd be quite fun to be known as a reformed mythologist because it it's a nonsense, but it sounds like it shouldn't be.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, do you know what I mean?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_06: So you've got these two words reformed, which is r related to theology, and then myth mythologist, which is no one's a mythologist.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_06: There aren't any other kinds of mythologists, yeah, but it seemed like it could be a thing.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_06: And so I then was, you know, self-titled as reformed mythologist Nate Morgan Locke.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_06: And it seems to have been quite a hook for people.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_06: So I I will often get, you know, people referencing that back to me when it was literally just this sort of throwaway line.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: You need a better origin story, given given what you are.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: Mainly the reform mythologists.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: One day you're walking through a canyon and you heard a ton of stone and I turned.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_06: Um but what's in what's I found fascinating about that is so I think I think this thing, this niche of rough being reformed mythology, State Wong Locke, it's actually really quite big.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_06: And I think growing.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_06: Now it may just be growing because I'm finding more and more that I can look at and go, oh, I can pull that into this new topic that I've invented.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_06: Or it could be because there are lots of other people who are approaching ideas and questions in in the same sort of way, looking at theology and and culture and and the human condition in this way.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_06: So I think you know that there's a there's a cultural exegesis part, right?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_06: Which there are loads and loads of people are doing that, right?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_06: You find a film, you find a TV show, you find an artifact in the culture, and you say, Okay, let's look at this.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_06: Is it telling a story, and how is that story fulfilled or subverted in the gospel, right?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_06: So that's a thing.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_06: That loads of youth workers have been doing for a long time as well.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_06: Then you've got this other piece, which is like, well, what what's the systematics behind it?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_06: What why do we have stories?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_06: What is it that gives an accurate account of the existence of stories?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_06: The evolutionary biologists, they've got their view.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, it's all strategic.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_06: It's just an evolutionary story.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you go tell a story, get a girlfriend.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_06: That's the answer for basically everything.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_06: But yeah, if if they've got their view, but does that actually make sense?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_06: Does that hold up within what they're letting count?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_06: Then you've got this thing of comparative mythology.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_06: And so you mentioned um Joseph Campbell, and so you've got this hero's journey, you've got the Jungian archetypes, you've got all the stuff that Jordan Peterson you know has sort of talked about in terms of the world being not a place of things, but a place for action.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_06: And so it's like, how do we deal with ourselves, finding ourselves in this world of action where there are things that you can do and mean it?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_06: So that I think I can include in the in the then you've got you know the Lewis Tolkien Chesterton stuff, which they've written so brilliantly and and hilariously on this sort of stuff, where I think that's worth looking at.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_06: But then not only that, Glenn, not only surveying what has been laid out there for.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_06: There's more, but what about this as a an entry point into the creation of stories themselves?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_06: So the inspirational side of it, what does it mean if this is all true, if there is this true myth, and if there is an accounting for the existence of story because of who God is, what does this mean for how we conduct ourselves and what can we create off the back of it?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_06: Um which is a totally different thing from saying, Hey, here's what I think of Toy Story 4.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yep.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_06: You know, which is just to say, here's why the story doesn't work, or or or some people would argue it does, but they're wrong.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: So we'll leave it there.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: And the totally different thing is, well, how do you now go and write to Toy Story 5?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: Is that is that the new the new thing is?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_03: That shouldn't be a Toy Story 5.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_06: I so I brought it up, but you carried it on.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, okay.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_06: But how do how do you write something new?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_06: Is that that's how do you genuinely write something which you know so so a guy like um Andrew Peterson, right?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_06: Yep.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_06: He's then I have to admit I haven't yet read these books that everyone's talked about.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_06: But how do you go out and and create something which people can consume for entertainment and edification at some level, and it's gonna raise questions.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_06: And and how do we do that education the portmanteau?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_06: Um so yeah, I think there's a there's something that's really creative about what we can do in that little world.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well it's not better it's not little.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: You've just described everything.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, everything basically.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_06: So but it's all part of my interest area.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's your sweet spot.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: And uh you're now here in Eastbourne with Speak Life, and we are about to welcome um well, we'll have five residential interns to come.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll have uh a couple of people who are sort of gonna be coming to us for part of the time, and part of the time gonna be zooming in, and then a whole bunch of other people.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: If you go to speaklifefoundry.com, you can come and join us um for our week-long internship um intensives where you learn the craft of of of filmmaking.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes, people can come to uh Speak Life Foundry unlocked, and we've got all sorts of things on Fridays.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: Are you looking forward to Fridays?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_06: I think Friday is gonna be my best, my favorite day of the week over this next year.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_06: Um I think I mean the mornings are gonna be great as we sort of think about theology for life and mission, but then the afternoon, yeah, stories to win the world, it just gets me really excited.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_06: We're gonna be able to dive into all of these different elements of you know the work of the reform mythologist, and that you know, the origin of stories, the power of stories, the shape of stories, yeah, the shapes and all the stuff.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: What they do for us, and uh and come we I can't believe we've gotten through so far without mentioning uh C.S.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: Lewis's steal past the watchful dragons thing.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like w I don't even know where where did that phrase come from?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_06: So it's in a an article he writes um called Why Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_06: And so wrote it in the New York Times in uh the 1950s, and he says, Um, why did I find it so hard to feel what I was told I ought to feel when I was told about the suffering of Christ?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_06: So you've got to imagine the young C.S.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_06: Lewis in church and he's being told, you know, Jesus died for you and you should feel because he did grow up in Northern Ireland, so you should feel this and this and this and this.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_06: And he says, he says the obligation to feel can freeze feelings.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_06: And I think that's very true.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_06: And he and I think from my own experience, you know, if someone sort of just is it's too direct, right?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_06: So he said, supposing one took these things and stripped them of their Sunday school and stained glass associations and set them into fantasy land, could one not steal past those watchful dragons?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_06: So it's the idea that when it comes to new new uh ways of thinking or new information, as a general rule, human beings are not you know desperate to find out more.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_06: If it's something that we know is challenging, it is something that we will seize up and we will you know be on our guard against.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_06: Um and so he says if the story could steal past watchful dragons, it can come at something in in maybe an indirect way or a slant way and open people out.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_06: The classic example of this would be when the prophet Nathan goes to speak to King David to confront him of his adultery and uh with Bathsheba and the death of of Uriah, and he tells him a story about two men and um uh in a town, one rich and and poor.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_06: Now that story, which we will do, we'll go into that in great depth, uh, maybe even looking at some Hebrew words.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_06: Well, hello.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_06: What's the point of the Mdiv?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_06: Um we'll really look at that slowly and we'll see just how the story works and how elements of the story only exist for the purpose of specifying to the point of distraction David to be able to invest in what's going on.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: A little you lamb.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_06: A little later just a little you lam.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_06: It's little and it sleeps in his arms and drinks from his cup.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_06: It's yeah, wow.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_06: You're like you can't imagine a more sort of tender picture of man and beast in terms of the That's just emotionalism, Nate.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: That should not be allowed.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then the the Well, I mean, what what kind of yeah, what kind of feedback would you get if you sort of gave a sermon that was trying to tug at heartstrings to that degree?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like people would think you were just being emotionalist and and kind of affected.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: You're being affected.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_06: I think you could I mean Nathan, you know, the Nathan is not the only prophet who goes to a king to confront of adultery, right?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_06: So you've got John the Baptist goes to Herod to confront him.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_06: That goes very differently, but but John the Baptist's approach is the direct bang, you know, propositional truth.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_06: It is unnormal.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_06: Keep your head to have tell a story.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_06: Um come on, guys, let's not be foolish about this.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_06: So but yeah, Nathan's thing is I can go in, and what I will do effectively is to get you to convict yourself when I flip it.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: Come on.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, my thing about like stories is is like if you're in an argument with somebody, then you try to take the high ground on them.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's a moral high ground, maybe it's an intellectual high ground, maybe it's in terms of the experts that you can muster on your side.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: You're taking the high ground.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas if you tell a story, you're take you're taking all the ground.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: You're like, yeah, let me tell you this world.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_06: Live in the world that I'm back to.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_03: I am going to and I'm going to give you every detail of the world that you are now going to inhabit.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: So shut up and listen.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: People think that stories are like this this little breadcrumb thing that's just like tickling, tickling them under the belly.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_06: And that's funny, because so very occasionally, and I think you do this too sometimes when you're doing the love story stuff, you you ask for sort of audience participation in the telling of the story, right?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_06: You ask for what it might be and what it might be.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_06: But what we know is that you they can contribute some of the details and they can feel an investment in that way, but it just doesn't work to put all the effort or all the all the impetus on the on the listener to to come with a story.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_06: They're like, no, I want you to choose your own adventure doesn't work to tell me what happened.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, exactly.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_06: What is the result of this decision that was made?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: And there are right ways and wrong ways for the story to unfold.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_06: You know.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_06: And and there are things that everyone knows you can't do because you've just broken the rules that you set up.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_06: So that's not going to work.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_06: But their outrage at the breaking of the rules is because they've already bought, as you say, this we live in your world, the world you've just started to describe to me.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: Which is why the reformed and the mythologist really does belong together, because here is a worldview about the sovereignty of gods that says yes, he he is the author and you are but a character.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, what other kind of mythologists are you gonna be?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, um it's interesting, yeah.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, we'll go into this, I think, on the Fridays as well.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_06: Do some stuff on um on Chesterton when he's writing in in Orthodoxy, um he talks about how the stories can only be Christian.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_06: But his argument for it is to say that because uh Christianity insists on free will, so he says you have to have this possible perd, possible danger.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_06: Um the hero will not be eaten by the monster, but you need an eat an edible hero.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, yes.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_06: It's like there's gotta be the chance that he could be destroyed.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_06: And so so but I so I don't think it quite holds up what what his argument is there, but it's absolutely essential that we see that the world that we live in has this possibilities are always before us.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_06: That hum we where there are choices which are being made, which have implications.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_06: Um and then Lewis, to you know, to go back to him, when he's talking about um story is the way in which you can hold together divine responsibility or sovereignty, and sorry, divine sovereignty and human responsibility.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_06: So he says you can tell a story about a fulfilled prophecy.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_06: So if you think of the you know the Oedipul myth, which is this, you know, there's this prophecy, which however hard anyone tries to stop it happening, fate it's going to happen.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_06: And so Lewis sort of says how how myth or story is the way in which we can see how that actually plays out.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_06: How both of these things can be true at the same time, yeah.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_06: Because it's the yeah, it it's the the proper arena for seeing that sort of a dilemma.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was talking to Andrew Peterson the other day, and and um because I'm halfway through reading his books with my daughter, I didn't want to press into this too much because I thought there'd be too many plot spoilers, but he he was telling me about the finale of his fourth book.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah he had plotted it out so that it would unfold one way, and when he came to actually write it, he couldn't it lit the story would not unfold in that direction, he had to take it in another direction.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm pretty sure from what he was saying, a certain character had to die.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_06: But and that's that's again one of the things that would be is going to be great for us to look at is the nature of inspiration, is the relationship between you know authorial control and sovereignty, yeah, and these characters that just seem to do their own thing, and you're not quite you're sort of chasing after them trying to work out what's happening.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's amazing.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_06: Why is that the way that everyone seems to experience it?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: Especially because in the classical world it it does unfold according to fate, and what necessarily happens is always the tragedy.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: There is there is not the good catastrophe, there's not the you catastrophe in that Tolkien sense, which is why the the tragedy, you know, it's the Greek tragedians, right?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: That the the that we know about, and the it's it's sort of comedy becomes a a a Chris a particularly Christian genre.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um because well, I I I I guess we now become prisoners of hope, to use that sort of Zechariah phrase.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: I love that phrase, you know, we we are now prisoners of hope.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas we used to be, you know, prisoners of despair.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: Now I guess because of the Christ story, um, well, I get I guess there better be a turn for the good.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I guess there better be a yeah, and and you know, now you tell kids about the love story.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: What should happen now?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they should marry each other and there should be a feast and a song.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I g I guess we have to.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's that's the way these stories go now.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_06: And yeah, and and those challenges that people face in terms of you know plotting something out.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_06: I'd written the last chapter of the final book way before I'd written anything else.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_06: And I'd sort of you know plotted out how it's gonna get there.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_06: But did like did you have that control?
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_06: Did you find that these things came alive in your hands?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_06: Did you find that you were, you know, working with material not quite your own in that sense.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah, Stephen King talks about you know asking his characters where they need to go now.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what are you talking about?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: All those characters are in your head, Stephen.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: Why don't you just ask yourself?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_06: They could just do this.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and um yeah, Barry Cooper uses a phrase call uh the oughtness of endings, and there is something about you know, and this is like a it's like every six months some big TV show finishes or some big film franchise everybody and everything's like no, this wasn't the way it's supposed to be.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_06: And you think, well, well, why was it supposed to be?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I think what was it that you think about it.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_06: You think you are um and yeah, there's there's there's all of that going on.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah, these are things obviously we're gonna talk about Friday afternoons.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_06: Um we're also gonna be then looking at the you know the the skills to make particular kinds of content and speak life media production and which is also something you're gonna be helping us with.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: We just had a great um kind of brainstorming session on what are we gonna do about harvest harvest festival coming up in September?
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_06: And I said, what did I say?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_06: I said we're we're gonna do a series.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, okay.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_06: And nobody gets this.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_06: Nobody gets it because Ceres was the Roman goddess of the harvest.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_06: Um Demeter is a Greek.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_06: But yeah.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_06: I thought it was the funniest joke.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_06: But of course, that's uh a little reformed mythologist joke.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: Keep keep things a bit more broad than just a little bit more broad than that.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, so we're thinking about harvest, thinking about uh a character who is just relentlessly positive and grateful, and what a transformative impact he would have on the world.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, and that's uh that's just fun.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like like I mean I was trying to think at the end of our meeting, like, where did this idea come from?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like I think it was probably you.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_06: You you just probably said I suppose what's interesting is that the idea comes and then you sort of and so the other title, I think I this is in my Twitter bio, which is a parallelomaniac.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_06: So that I'm I'm not using it in the strictest sense of the term, parallelomaniac.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_06: But it basically means that I'm and I think you are very similar-minded, you see the connections between things very quickly.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_06: And it's like part of a comic thing that you're you're saying, this is a bit like that.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_06: And a lot of preaching and illustrating sermons is about that sort of thing.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_06: Um but very quickly you'll find yourself coming up with an idea, and then you think, hold on, this is sounds a bit like it sounds a bit like you know, Buddy the Elf, or it sounds a bit like Emmett Brukowski.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_06: Yep.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_06: You know, this bizarrely positive, thankful, grateful character who is seemingly oblivious to the cynicism and misery of everyone around the place.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_06: But has this kind of powerful effect, um, this impact on the on the people by not just believing that everything has to be played in the minor key forever.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_06: Right, right, right.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: A b a burst of sunshine in amidst all the dreary drabness.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: And um so maybe a working title is uh who can I thank?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: But uh yeah, so our our our big idea, yeah, someone who just has to thank everybody.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: What a what a burst of sunshine that that person would be.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um but yeah, just as an example of some of the uh content that we're gonna be uh keeping churning out here at Speak Life.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: But we're very glad that you're here, mate.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why not keep the conversation going?
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can keep the conversation going, yes, you.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to speaklifefoundry.com and find out about all the training options we have for you.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Again, super flexible, depending on whether you can come in person or online, depending on how much time you can give.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: But if you enjoyed this episode, if what Glenn and Nate were talking about, if that's something that interests you using creativity and storytelling for Christ, then I really recommend checking that out, and it would be lovely to see some of you in person.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening, and I will catch you next time.