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The Story Of Hope

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Why don’t you spend more seminar time training people to use The Story of Hope?

For one thing, it’s just a simple issue related to the amount of time we have available in a seminar (a full 14 hours of teaching time is what we need).  In order to cover the other necessary parts of the seminar, we can’t afford the luxury of spending more time on The Story of Hope than is currently allotted in the seminar teaching plan.

But we do spend a good part of the second day in The Story of Hope.  We do cover every section of the book and give practice times for some of them.  I suppose that many seminar participants would enjoy and benefit from a teaching overview of the forty Bible events, but that would consume quite a bit of time.

The 130 page Leader’s Guide for The Story of Hope was created to compensate for the fact that we can’t give in-class instruction on the content of each of the 40 events or the methods for leading people through those events in a study setting.

We believe that post-seminar practice or real-ministry experience using The Story of Hope is the key to becoming comfortable with it, within ten days to two weeks after the seminar training.  Ideally, that should be with an unbeliever or a new believer in order to get the feel of handling real questions.  Maybe you can approach a friend who is not saved or is young in the faith and tell him or her that you just received training to lead The Story of Hope Bible studies and need someone to help you learn more about how to lead them.  Perhaps appealing to their willingness to help would be a good way to get them involved.

Other practice ideas that we often recommend include using it for a devotional study with your family or simply leading another Christian friend through it for the sake of practice—perhaps alternating the person who leads each event study.  We’ve discovered that it generally takes three experiences leading a study before you will feel comfortable with the process.

Have you considered developing a Vacation Bible School module around The Story of Hope?

A Vacation Bible School edition (per se) of The Story of Hope is not a project that we are planning to develop, at least at this time.  But we are working on adapting The Story of Hope for use in various children’s ministries—Sunday school, camps, five day clubs, etc.

It is fairly easy to format the 40 events in The Story of Hope into a five day teaching plan—basically eight events per day (on the average).  Some folks have already done that sort of thing for camp and other settings.  One of our ABWE children ministry specialists has been training children’s workers overseas to do this kind of thing.  The Story of Hope printed teaching visuals (laminated and non-laminated options) and The Story of Hope PowerPoint presentation both provide visual support for presentations to children.  And, since they are wordless, they can be used in any language group context.

Answers in Genesis has an excellent chronological Bible-based VBS program, the Amazon Expedition.

How do you handle questions from different eschatological views?

The Story of Hope and The Way to Joy are primarily designed for use with unbelievers or new believers, so “eschatological views” questions wouldn’t come from them.  So, I assume, this question could be worded more clearly like this: “How do you address concerns of people who want to use these books but who hold eschatological views (views concerning the “end times”) that differ from the views expressed in The Story of Hope?”

It’s very good question and one that concerns us!

The authors of The Story of Hope hold to a pre-tribulational, pre-millennial view of eschatology (study of “last things”).  But, we did not intend to use The Story of Hope to promote our view of last things.  The Story of Hope was written primarily to present God’s redemptive plan (“Big Story” or metanarrative) in such a way that unbelievers and can understand it and be saved.  It is our intention to focus on what is most important—God’s provision for redeeming fallen men and women, as well as the physical creation which has been cursed as result of Adam and Eve’s fall.

But to tell the whole “Big Story,” we can’t just jump from Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension to Revelation 21 & 22 (new heavens and new Earth).  Well, I suppose we could do that, but it would by-pass some very important “hopeful” features in God’s story of hope.  For example:

• For us, the return of Jesus for believers is one of our most precious hopes.  We believe it’s the event that Paul refers to as “the blessed hope” in Titus 2:13.
• And what hope would there be for mankind, if God did not eternally banish Satan into a place of eternal damnation?  If we stopped in our study at the ascension of Christ back to the Father in heaven or if we jumped from the ascension to Revelation 21-22, we would be neglecting this key prophetic event that appears in Revelation 20:7-10.
• If we failed to deal adequately with the great white throne judgment (Revelation 20:11-15), we would miss a key opportunity to warn unbelievers of the dreadful, eternal wrath of God that they will face if they reject God’s provision for their redemption.

So, while we do not intend to promote any particular view of last things, to tell the entire Big Story of the Bible, requires that we make our eschatological views known.  And as we do that, we certainly respect other legitimate interpretations as to how the story ends.

Question: Would we ever create a version of The Story of Hope that could be used by amillennialists (those who believe that there will be no literal, earthly 1000 year reign of Christ), for example? 

Answer: We might be willing to work with some evangelical organization to allow them to adapt The Story of Hope in a way that did not contradict our views, but did present the end of the story in a way that did not contradict their eschatological views.

For additional information, read the Cultivate blog article on the End-Focus for The Story of Hope. 

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