Different Approaches to Storytelling

I've spent the last several mornings watching the videos for my seminary class on Biblical Storytelling.  Some of the material reminded me of some of the activities that my Florida church did when we had more children and experimented with interactive services.  It wouldn't take much to adapt these techniques for any church or group.

We had a few puppets which we often used, often with costumes, but just as often not paying attention to what the puppet wore:

I don't know that I ever met a child who wasn't rivetted by a puppet.

But even if your church doesn't have puppets, which can be expensive to buy, or doesn't want to make puppets, you could have fun acting out the story.  We had a box of costumes/old clothes, but this picture shows that even if you don't have such a box, you can make do with whatever you have on hand--like paper towels:

In my Biblical storytelling class, we'll need to be able to get 75% word accuracy without consulting the text, but we certainly didn't do that in my Florida church.  The cool thing about approaching the Biblical text as skit is that one person can read, while the others act.  And no rehearsing is necessary.

This class has made me think about the Intro to Lit class that I'll be teaching next term.  It's been tough to get the students to come to class having read the text.  I'm going to ponder whether or not some of these techniques could be adapted to the college classroom.  Stay tuned!