GoTell Still Alive and Well

Between births and deaths, new ministries, physical challenges, tornadoes and floods, there has been dead silence on our GoTell website and no e-letter since, gag, LAST YEAR! It’s not because GoTell hasn’t been doing anything, we just haven’t been doing website updates or e-letters. Here’s an attempt to get going again, motivated by the Festival Gathering now in Dayton for the second of three years.

Festival Gathering 2019

Opening worship at the 2019 Festival Gathering of the Network of Biblical Storytellers featured the story of Elisha and the Widow, and a very moving personal story performed by Donna Marie Todd. Her story had clear connections to the biblical story. There were both tears and laughter in our hearing. And of course we all sang with gusto “I Love to Tell the Story.”

Our keynote speaker, Dr. Kathy Maxwell, gave her first of three talks on the first day, July 31. Her topic is “Hearing Between the Lines.” She introduced a fascinating way of looking at story by focussing on “the space around the words.” Her presentation helped us get a better handle on something we sensed: “The power of story is most fully realized when you connect with it; when we connect, we get invested in it.”

I had a robust group of sixteen in my NBS 101 workshop. We are engaging the story of Tabitha (AKA Dorcas) from Acts 9. We covered a lot of ground and everybody seemed to get at least the gist of the story. They had many of the details down pat. All reached the stated goal to “tell the story to at least one other person without omitting something of great significance and without adding something of great significance.” One thing we learned: if you leave out a line, you tend to recall it quite well the next time you try telling.

Tell the Story,
Amelia