I. Vision Statement
The purpose of this series is to help people and our congregations encounter the overall story of the Bible so that they might be shaped by that story in ways that help them to:

• interpret the story
• connect the story with their own experiences
• live in the world as disciples of Jesus Christ

II. Introduction
We live in a time in which a vast amount of stories, interests, and worldviews are shaping the lives of communities and individuals. Technology, media, and diverse political, social, economic, and religious groups each will communicate in implicit and explicit ways what it means to live in the new century. Although we believe God can work through many of these interests, Christians and the church bring a unique voice to those competing stories and worldviews—a living faith informed and empowered by God and God's story.

The word story is used in many ways in this series, but in all cases refers to the narrative nature of human experience. The lives of individuals and communities are made up of a series of engagements—some within one's own heart or mind, some with others, some with nature, some with God. Retold, these engagements are stories. When we listen closely to these stories, we discover who we are and what we are about. When we hear or experience the stories of others, we may recall similar stories in our own lives or we may imagine ourselves in the experience of others. Because of that, we may change. Others' stories re-create a new story within our own lives.

The Bible, too, reflects this narrative nature. It includes inspired accounts of God's interaction with people, communities, and nature. Proclaimed, experienced, prayed, played, and retold, these accounts are stories. In this series, we are invited to experience the stories and to discover how they may shape and change us. We also may come to discover the overall story of the Bible; that is, the theological narrative, drama, or tapestry that comes from connecting one story with another.

This series emphasizes teaching that overall story of the Bible, developing skilled and faithful interpreters, and inviting persons to live as disciples of Jesus Christ. Children, youth, and adults all need to discover the unique story of faith found in the Bible to discover who they are in a diverse world. We need to know the stories; we need to be able to interpret the stories, to make decisions, and to express faith inspired by our encounter with the stories so that each person and community deeply knows itself to be part of God's people. This overall story of the Bible—a story of God's incarnation, love, justice, and salvation, a story of God's good news—and our interpretation and expression of the story are essential and needed gifts to the next century.

III. We Understand the Bible as Story
Through the power of the Holy Spirit, story is one of the primary ways we understand who God is, who we are, and how to tell others about God. This understanding of the Bible as story makes the following claims:

• The Bible is the living and transforming story of God's mysterious and wondrous self-revelation in the world.
• The Christian community believes the overall story includes accounts of God's relationship to the world from its beginnings through creation; the mighty acts with the people of Israel; the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and the fulfillment of God's reign.
• In the Bible all literary forms, including the poetry of the psalms and the letters of Paul, are based on underlying stories.
• Within that overall story, the Bible contains many themes that are repeated throughout in a variety of ways. Each time a theme is approached we can affirm, celebrate, or discover—sometimes for the first time—an aspect of God. For this series, we have chosen four themes: incarnation, covenant and relationship, salvation, and liberation and justice.
• Each story in the Bible has its own theological integrity; each story expresses particular understandings of God and God's world, to be discovered afresh.
• Each theme includes many stories, and each individual story can relate to more than one theme. All these stories and themes taken together weave an overall story of God. They refer to and describe God, who transcends any one theme or story.
• The story is an inspired gift of God that originates in the transforming action of God; we receive that gift by God's spirit.
• The faith community has told and tells the story over time, passing it from generation to generation. The faith community preserves that story and celebrates it. The story is not only a story of a preserved past, but, touched by God's power, it can challenge and transform the faith community that proclaims it.

Continuity exists between God's story in the past and God's story in the present and future. Any understanding of "our story" or "today's story" should not be separated from God's story or even the Bible story.

IV. We Encounter and Interpret the Story
Through their imaginations, emotions, and minds, persons are invited into the biblical world, and its dilemmas and situations. By entering into the Bible story, persons of all ages may come to imagine themselves, their community, and their world in new ways. Such imagination may lead to shaping and forming them in faith, encouraging them to connect the Bible story with their contemporary situation. This emphasis on encounter and interpretation makes the following claims:

• People of all ages encounter and interpret the story. Children, youth, and adults each can seek meaning from the Bible through questioning, playing, praying, wondering, acting, relating, and stating belief.
• All people, regardless of their theological understanding or experience in the church, who engage the Bible are interpreting it as they seek to understand its meaning for their lives.
• The Bible itself reflects a history of ongoing interpretation. The Bible includes stories, accounts, and writings that often build on or interpret other writings in the Bible.
• Encounter and interpretation are expanded and enriched by engaging the interpretations of people of various historical times, cultures, races, genders, economics, orientations, ages, and abilities. For example, insights into the ancient world of the Bible serve as an historical corrective to our contemporary mindset. Insights and experiences of a variety of contemporary people expand the limited experience of any one person or community.
• One's ability to engage the Bible story is not dependent on one's ability to read a text in any traditional understanding of literacy or reading. One engages the story through a variety of experiences and methods.
• Encounter and interpretation involve a variety of human abilities. People come to understand through cognitive and experiential methods—ways that touch the head, heart, and imagination. They discover meaning through the arts, prayer, discussion, action, and other means. These methods provide opportunities to enter or express the story, not merely to reinforce a predetermined meaning or moral of a story.
• Relationships among persons influence their ability to interpret. In a caring and open environment persons are able to risk, to be challenged, and to grow in their ability to interpret the biblical story.
• Through the full ministry of the faith community, we are encountering and interpreting the story as we worship, celebrate sacraments, teach and learn, serve, and witness prophetically.
• The Holy Spirit makes the biblical story contemporary in our lives and faith communities. Faithful encounter and interpretation require prayer and an openness to God's revealing spirit. Through prayer we invite God, whose way is revealed in the ancient story of the Bible, to make God's way known again today.

Often we are in tension with the story and with one another as we interpret the story. The story may challenge the faith community and individuals to new insight, to repent, and to act. Sometimes the community challenges individuals to new understandings and to growth in their interpretations. Other times, individuals challenge the faith community to re-examine its interpretation.

V. We Live the Story in the World as Disciples
Individuals and communities express their particular faith through their practices and actions in the world. Their actions demonstrate who they believe God to be and what power they let God have in their lives. Their witness in the world expresses their discipleship. For Christians, Jesus Christ is the one we follow. This emphasis on discipleship makes the following claims:

• Interpretation connects understanding from the Bible to living in our contemporary world as disciples of Jesus Christ.
• Involvement with the world is not only the outcome of good interpretation; the contemporary world is the very context in which we interpret.
• Encounter and interpretation will lead the faith community to embody the story, becoming communal pictures of the story in the world.
• Discipleship for Christians is a response to a vital relationship with the living Christ, engaged through the story, nurtured in the church, and expressed in the world.
• We hear the story in the midst of a variety of communities, and we are influenced by those communities. The faith community exists alongside and within family, political, economic, cultural, and racial communities. Sometimes the story is discovered in those communities. Sometimes the story contends with and judges those communities.