Every month or so Zondervan sends me a few books to read that have just been published about Youth Ministry.  This week I got a copy of Enter the Story by Michael Novelli and I made a  mistake of opening it before putting it on the pile of books to read later. 

I met Michael at one of the National Youth Workers Convention this fall and although we didn’t spend a significant amount of time together I was struck by his warm introduction and what I instantly recognized as a depth of character.  What I mean by that is that I saw someone who generally looked and acted like he was willing to engage with someone he just met and didn’t know with no side agenda or plan.  He also struck me as someone who lives what he writes about.  That's a huge deal for me as it validates what he writes.

Later at that conference I was speaking with another friend who told me more about Michael and what he was doing with the Merge event and the Echo The Story website.   He mentioned to me that a book was coming out at some point and that it might really help re frame a way of doing youth ministry education that would be  helpful.

So I opened the book.   What I was immediately struck by was that this didn’t seem to be a typical Youth Ministry resource book of lessons.  He takes a significant amount of time (4 chapters) to frame the purpose and the learning experiences that he presents through the stories.  My favorite part of the introduction is a short paragraph that describes how one of his students connected with the “Story Experiment” teaching style. 

“The more we dove into the Story, the deeper their insights and questions became.  One of my teens described it this way: “For the first time I felt like I could relate to the characters in the story…I saw them as real, plausible, and many-sided.  They became real people doing real things…It challenged me to listen to God and obey his calling….to live in God’s will fully.  I need to surrender everything to God.”

I think what I liked the most about the Seven Stories he brings to life through the lessons in the book is that they are focused upon creating framework for the students that allows them to reinterpret all of the other Biblical stories they know through it’s lens. 

Maybe a better way to explain that is to say that I live in the Bible Belt of Texas where the Biblical stories and worldview is hammered into students from a very early age.  But, while many students have “knowledge” of scripture and Biblical stories they haven’t all necessarily entered “into” the story.  The resources in this book provide an opportunity for students to do that in a pretty great way.

Full disclosure.  I received a free copy of this book but have not received anything else to write this review.  I haven’t used any of the lessons yet but I am planning on using them in the near future.   Michael has another book out that I haven't read too but it seems to explain the Story concept even more.