Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado told stories about itself that were both enabling and hindering congregational change. Grace and St. Stephen’s needed a new story that would transform its identity and purpose. After having experienced a significant schism in its own life, as well as its continued reticence to live into stated desires to engage the needs of their downtown neighbors, Grace and St. Stephen’s was facing the adaptive challenge of transforming its congregational identity in such a manner that would promote engagement and connection with the downtown community of Colorado Springs. One method for transforming congregational identity is the use of Appreciative Inquiry, a method of community conversation that seeks to change the way a community talks, dreams, discerns and interacts by exploring the community’s gifts, passions, and hopes through the act of storytelling and story-sharing. Such stories invite a transformation of perception and perspective and move listeners from “what is” to “what might be”. This kind of storytelling is reminiscent of the parabolic storytelling of Jesus. If the church today is to live a new story it might do well to look to the storytelling of Jesus, and, like him, make space for people to both listen and speak a new story into being—a story that teases the imagination into activity and invites participation and transformation, because it is ultimately hidden in our common life.
