Quotes from Sarah Arthur

as Flannery O'Connor put it, "In the act of writing, one sees that the way a thing is made, controls and is inseparable from the whole meaning of it. The form of a story gives it meaning which any other form would change."6

To use C. S. Lewis's distinction, perhaps we could even say that for the evangelistic youth minister, it's about truth; for the bardic youth minister, it's about meaning. Both approaches are necessary and appropriate. But they are different and depend on the context.

Writes Native American storyteller Ray Buckley: A child relates storytelling . . . to human contact, and that contact becomes as much a part of the story as the story itself. As adults, we experience storytelling in much the same fashion. Isn't it interesting that in many cultures, storytelling is viewed as a form of touch?7

confirmation is one of the most important and serendipitous storytelling opportunities we in youth ministry will ever have.

Both moderns and postmoderns must be willing to try old things in new ways and new things in old ways.

If we want the next generation to know where they came from and thus who they are, we tell them stories so they won't forget. Then they pass the stories on to the generation after them, and so it goes.

If we trust Jesus' own storytelling approach, we must trust the Spirit to work in and through story without the need to interpret every metaphor, every parable, every time. But

As we already said, authors receive their ideas from somewhere; and in the case of holy scriptures, that somewhere is the mind of God. Human beings encountered Someone outside of their ordinary, everyday experience; and that Someone provided both the source and the interpretive lens for the way those encounters were narrated.

The more I look into this issue, the more I'm convinced that the imagination is this mysterious thread: specifically, the imagination "baptized" and "sanctified" by the Holy Spirit.

If their imaginations are starved, you feed them; if they are thirsty, you give them something to drink. Trust the Spirit to bring the needed nourishment along the way. NURTURING

All of us use our imaginations when it comes to faith, and all of us struggle to stay imaginatively healthy in this mostly neurotic, image-conscious culture.

Postmoderns must have the opportunity to experience the story as a story without the gospel being continually reduced to mere message.

vital role of the imagination in spiritual formation is to help a young person make meaningful connections between the church, the world, and her life.

if we consider the various ways the imagination is engaged throughout scripture—through dreams, visions, metaphor, poetry, prophecy, parable (not to mention the very act of reading)—every page begins to light up with evidence of the imagination's role in divine-human doings.

And that's what we're truly longing for. On those weekends when we're suddenly gripped with the urge to watch all three extended editions of The Lord of the Rings, what we really want, deep down inside (besides therapy), is the assurance that there is a realm someplace where evil has been conquered once and for all.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; which means that if the rest of us want to get close to God, we seek them out-not because of what we could possible offer them, as if we're the spiritual first responders on the scene to save the day, but because we recognize how much they have to teach us about who God really is." -Quoted by Sarah Arthur, Author of The One Year Daily Grind.

To respect someone means to treat their ideas, personal space, belongings, and needs as equal in importance to your own, while to honor someone means to treat all those things as more important than your own.

You are small. Your foe is big. But your God is bigger still.

God sent His Prince, Jesus, into rebel territory to conquer evil and free us to be true citizens of the Kingdom again... That's the essential story we find in the Bible, and it's the essential story at the heart of each of our lives. And that's what all good fantasy stories have at their core, whether or not it's a conscious theme.

All fairy tales, Tolkien argued, echo the gospel of Jesus Christ in some way because the gospel is the True Story; it's the real fairy tale that crashed into the time line of history... 'The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact,' Lewis wrote

While the Witch plays her pawn, the King sacrifices Himself, and to all appearances, the game is over. But the Lion has one last move...

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 else too. None of this business about Jesus being merely an enlightened Buddha of sorts, offering wiser-than-average insights into how to live a healthy, balanced life. None of this quoting Jesus in order to make your own point about justice or fairness or peace on earth when you don't really believe what Jesus said about Himself.

we hunger for other worlds. We long to go beyond the streets we know, beyond our familiar woods and fields, and into the land of Faerie; to Middle-earth, Narnia, or Summerland; to the kingdom east of the sun and west of the moon. This longing isn't incidental.

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.