Telling the Stories Afresh

Tracking stories around town with year 9 students from Dubbo Christian School recently, one smart young girl interjected, “But, there’s no point just putting murals on walls or placing statues in the main street unless someone tells you the story!”
 
Exactly!
 
More than half a century ago Richard Neihbur, a shrewd observer of culture, noted the same thing - that our key stories need to be written fresh into the heart of new generations.  ‘Culture is a social tradition which must be conserved by painful struggle not so much against non-human natural forces as against revolutionary and critical powers in human life and reason.’

I’m glad Tim Knight, who organised our exploration of the stories of Rev John Flynn, Bill Ferguson and Pearl Gibbs, has grabbed a hold of this. It was fun watching the students break into small ‘news teams’ to film their own versions of the faith-stories they were learning. It’s critical that we don’t let this transference of story lapse by neglecting to interpret it for Gen Alpha.