The Story is a dynamic, powerful, and rewarding experience produced by Zondervan for churches, families, small groups, and individuals. The Story is helping people everywhere experience Scripture like never before. Carefully selected verses from the Bible are organized chronologically.

From Genesis to Revelation, participants come to understand God’s story and how their stories intersect with it. Churches and small groups have seen enhanced comprehension of the Bible, newfound confidence to share the Word, unified community, and naturally increased community outreach by using The Story.

Bible Gateway interviewed Shelley Leith, national church coach for The Story (Zondervan, 2011) (website) (@TheStoryLives) church campaign and resources.

[Read our Blog post: One Thousand Churches BELIEVE]

Describe the current state of Bible awareness among Christians today.

Shelley Leith: Several years ago, pollster George Gallup Jr. summarized one of his research projects by saying:

“Churches face no greater challenge…than overcoming biblical illiteracy, and the prospects for doing so are formidable because the stark fact is, many Christians don’t know what they believe or why. Our faith is not rooted in Scripture. We revere the Bible but don’t read it. Some observers maintain that the Bible has not in any profound way penetrated our culture.”

[See our previous Blog posts: Most People Wish They Knew More About the Bible, A Summary of Recent Bible Reading Surveys, The Church is Starving Itself: An Interview with Kenneth Berding, and Ten Obstacles That Get in the Way of Bible Fluency]

What’s the difference between Bible literacy and Bible engagement?

Shelley Leith: If you think about it, it’s entirely possible to be biblically literate but not engaged with the Bible. This would be a person who has perhaps grown up in Sunday school, and maybe even attended a Christian school, so they’re very conversant with the Old Testament and New Testament, yet, their current practice does not include daily Bible reading or personal Bible study. Conversely, it’s possible for a person to be engaged with the Bible regularly, but their reading of Scripture is confined to the Gospels or the Psalms, and they never stray into the places in their Bible where the pages are stuck together, so they’re not biblically literate.

What is The Story? How was it conceived?

Shelley Leith: The book called The Story is a best-selling abridged chronological Bible. There are no biblical structures in the text, and the segments of Scripture are arranged chronologically and connected with transition text written to connect the storyline so it reads like a seamless narrative. For people new to the Bible, this way of reading Scripture reduces the intimidation one can feel when approaching the full-length unabridged Bible, and it gives them a holistic and sequential picture of the storyline of Scripture. For seasoned Bible veterans, the chronological arrangement of the essential texts reveals the way the whole Bible fits together in a single grand narrative. The Story is what I like to call a Bible suction machine, because it triggers discovery and curiosity, and drives people back to the original Bible texts for further exploration.

What is The Story Church Campaign, and why should a church use The Story?

Shelley Leith: Here’s where it gets really exciting. The Story Church Campaign is a collection of resources based on The Story that provides a complete spiritual growth pathway for every member of the family. So, you have completely-aligned 31-chapter Story books for every reading level in the family, plus, you have classroom curriculum for every age-related ministry in the church. Churches, perhaps for the first time, can offer their families a cohesive learning experience where every member of the family, from two-year-olds to 92-year-olds, are on the same spiritual pathway, going at the same rate, for a prolonged period of time. Churches that go through The Story in a journey that aligns their preaching and their adult, youth, and children’s ministries, experience heightened unity across all sectors. There’s something powerful that seems to remove the barriers between age groups when the church does The Story.

How long does it take for a church to complete The Story program?

Shelley Leith: The Story is a 31-week program, which spans approximately seven months. The majority of churches start in September, break for the Advent season, pick back up in January, line up the Resurrection chapter with Easter Sunday, then end around Mother’s Day. Other popular start times are in January where they do the Old Testament in the winter and spring, take a summer break, then do the New Testament in the fall; or many start at Easter, taking no breaks and ending at Thanksgiving.

What church traditions/denominations have used The Story?

Shelley Leith: The beautiful thing that’s causing The Story to catch fire across our nation is that it’s Bible-driven, not author-driven or theme-driven. The Story is simply a chronology of actual Scripture taken from your choice of the NIV, the KJV, or the NKJV text, so pastors and ministers and priests and lay leaders are able to teach The Story through the lens of their own theology or their own denominational affiliation. Thus, we’ve seen churches across the spiritual spectrum doing The Story, and we even have resources tailored to these specific denominations included in our online Resource Library:

• African Methodist Episcopalian
• Baptist
• Christian Church
• Church of Christ
• Episcopalian
• Lutheran (LCMS and ELCA)
• Missionary Baptist
• Non-Denominational
• Pentecostal Assemblies of the World
• Presbyterian (PCUSA and EPC)
• Reformed Church
• United Methodist

You’ll find such resources as Lutheran confirmation class adaptations, Episcopalian liturgical readings taken from The Story, charismatic sermons, and a capella worship sets for the Church of Christ tradition.

What are you hearing from churches that have used The Story?

Shelley Leith: Many churches are finding that their parents are actually feeling equipped to become the disciplers of their children, because they’re learning the same thing at the same time as their children. When the take-home materials ask them to lead a spiritual discussion at home, they’re more likely to actually initiate that discussion because they just read the same scriptures and talked about the same topics in their groups and heard a sermon on the same subject, so their confidence is strengthened!

One somewhat unexpected result that many churches have experienced is growth—growth in numbers, growth in offerings, and growth in outreach. This could be explained by a few factors. One is that the people in the church become more confident in knowing what’s going to be happening in church from week to week, so they become more invitational. Another is that the people who attend semi-regularly start coming more consistently because of the “I wonder what’s going to happen next?” element that’s organically built into the chronological arrangement of the program. There’s also the fact that the Bible itself is surprisingly attractional—people who hear that their local church is going through the Bible in this manner are drawn there, because even unchurched or dis-churched people have a desire to read through the Bible sometime in their lifetime.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Shelley Leith: Two of my favorite quotes about The Story came from my journey of interviewing people in over a dozen different churches for the film project about The Story.

“The Bible has always been hard to pick up and read. The Story is hard to put down.” (church attender who was new to the church)
“The job of The Story is not to replace the Bible, but to direct you toward the Bible.” (Sunday school teacher for senior adults)

These quotes capture for me the real excitement that one feels when reading the scriptures in this fresh new presentation, and the end goal of this whole project, which is to turn everyday people into devoted Bible readers.

More Info: If you have a question about The Story or The Story Church Campaign, you’ll find answers in multiple videos by church coach Shelley Leith, who draws from her vast background as developer of church training materials to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about The Story.