Cliff Barbarick is an associate professor in the Department of Bible, Missions, and Ministry at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. His first experience with biblical storytelling was a video of David Rhoads performing the Gospel of Mark. He was immediately intrigued (“This is fascinating and exciting!”) but also intimidated (“Who could do such a thing?”). Over the years, and through the encouragement of fellow biblical scholars in the field, he eventually built up the courage to internalize a chunk of the New Testament and tell it in one of his classes. He started with Philemon and quickly noticed two things: students were more engaged when he told them the letter from memory (rather than reading it), and students more readily recognized and understood the rhetorical strategy of Paul’s letter. Based on this initial success, he quickly moved to creating assignments that invited (okay, required) students to internalize and tell sections of the New Testament. His classes now regularly include biblical storytelling, and with his students he has performed the Gospel of Mark, the Sermon on the Mount, selections from Luke and Acts, 1 Peter, James, and several of Paul’s letters (2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 Thessalonians). 

For Cliff, biblical storytelling also has a rich life outside of the university classroom. When teaching Bible classes, preaching, or “reading” Scripture in worship, he regularly shares passages that he has internalized, and he enjoys teaching others to explore Scripture in this way. He has worked with Come before Winter to lead retreats for missionaries and church workers across the world, and in those settings he has witnessed the power of biblical storytelling to nourish and renew. And for him, over the years, the process of internalizing and telling biblical storytelling has become the most meaningful personal spiritual discipline. In short, he found in biblical storytelling a method for exploring Scripture that intersects and combines the various aspects of his vocation: biblical studies, teaching, church ministry, and spiritual formation. 

Cliff lives in Abilene with his wife, Tali (who never tires of teasing him about his nerdy obsession with internalizing Scripture), and his three kids (who have grown accustomed to seeing Dad walk around the house talking to himself as he learns a new story).

Biblical storytelling (or, as it’s called in academic circles, biblical performance criticism) begins with the recognition that the biblical compositions were intended to be heard aloud rather than read silently. We now swim in the water of a print culture and can hardly imagine another way of living. If something is important to us, we write it down so that it can be recorded and remembered precisely. But the impulse to codify knowledge in silent, stable print—and the assumption that this is the best way to preserve knowledge—is a fairly recent human development that depends on the invention of the printing press. For much of human history, including the wide periods of time in which the biblical compositions were created, different assumptions guided human activity. In an oral culture, if something is important, you tell it and hear it and learn it and tell it again. Silent print can’t be trusted to transmit important knowledge not only because of low literacy rates but, more importantly, because silent print only stiltedly communicates what can be expressed through the vocal inflections, facial expressions, gestures, and audience reactions of an oral performance. Ancients, therefore, created compositions through oral performance and with oral performance as the end goal. 

Once we grasp this cultural gap between our print culture and the world of the biblical “writers,” a question naturally arises: Are we missing anything when we don’t experience the biblical compositions in the way they were intended? Researchers in this field sometimes use the analogy of a musical score to make the point. A score is a silent print artifact, but it didn’t originate that way and certainly isn’t intended to stay that way. The musical piece was likely composed through performance experimentation, and the written score transcribes the product of that creative, aural process. You can study the silent print of that score without hearing the song, but no one would assume they have understood the score until they’ve heard it performed (maybe multiple times by different performers, who would each perform the score in slightly different ways). Could the same be true for the biblical compositions? If they were composed orally through repeated tellings before being transcribed in writing, and if they were intended to be heard (rather than read) by largely illiterate audiences, can we fully understand these compositions if we’ve never heard them? 

Those who practice biblical storytelling (or biblical performance criticism) contend that much can be learned about these compositions when we tell and hear them aloud. Audiences experience a renewed immediacy with these stories when a well-prepared storyteller recounts them with all of the inflection, expression, and gestures that we would use in normal conversation. Almost always, audiences walk away from these experiences noticing new facets to stories they’ve “read” many times before. Also, those who perform the stories learn much through the disciplined process of internalizing a story and making intentional decisions about how to perform it. Interpretive choices that we can avoid when reading silently—such as the tone of voice Jesus uses when addressing the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7—require a decision when preparing to tell the story to others. 

The performances included on Stories for the Sojourn share the insights of both hearing and telling. You can watch a recorded performance to approximate the experience of hearing (rather than reading) one of these stories. Then, the commentary that follows each performance reveals some of what the performer learned about the story through the process of internalizing and telling it. Hopefully, experiencing these stories in this way will offer you a fresh encounter with the good news these compositions proclaim (aloud!). 

The author of 1 Peter imagines his as audience as exiles, or sojourners, living between two revelations of Jesus Christ. They live in the time after Jesus’s ministry, death, and resurrection, and their shared confession of his kingship gathers them as a community. But they still await Jesus’s second revelation, when he will return to set everything right and bring about the fullness of God’s shalom. In this time between the revelations, they live as sojourners, dislocated from their true home and suffering the marginalization of exiles. 

The author writes to encourage and exhort them to faithfully follow Jesus during their time of exile. He reminds them, “You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God” (1:23). And what is that word, the seed that generates new life? “That word is the good news that was announced to you” (1:25). In other words, the life-giving word is a story—the good story—of what God has done through his Son. 

The announcement of this story gave them new life, and now he calls for them to cling to that story as they wait for Christ’s return. “Like newborn infants,” he exhorts them, “long for the pure word-milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation” (2:2). The same word-story that brought life (as seed) will now nourish and sustain them (as milk) on their sojourn. Throughout the rest of the letter, the author presents them with this story—directly describing or alluding to the pattern of Christ that he exhorts them to follow (e.g., 2:4, 21–25; 3:18) and highlighting those who embody that story in their own midst (e.g., slaves in 2:18–20, women in 3:1–6, and elders in 5:1–3)—in hopes that it will nourish them to salvation in the midst of their sojourn in exile. 

We find ourselves in the same situation—living between the revelations of Christ and needing nourishment that can grow us and sustain us during our sojourn. Like the author of 1 Peter, I believe we can find that nourishment in the good news of the life-giving God who empties himself. Through the thoughtful telling of the many stories that reveal this God, this site aims to draw our attention to the good story, the Word that gives new birth and grows us into salvation. May God nourish us through these stories for the sojourn.