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Music: Cade Popkin

Gabe Hartfield

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Takeaways

• Stories can serve different functions in communication.
• Effective storytelling can make a point without creating conflict.
• Crafting stories requires precision and clarity.
• Stories can help bridge gaps in understanding.
• Using stories can slow down the pace of communication.
• Because of competing narratives in society, Christians must tell the better story.
• Practicing storytelling enhances communication skills.

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Episode Chapters

Shannon Popkin (00:00)
Gabe Hartfield, welcome to Live Like It’s True.

Gabe (00:03)
good to be here.

Shannon Popkin (00:04)
So Gabe, you have served as the Young Adults Pastor at Crossroads Bible Church, my church, for the last three years, and that’s how we got to know each other. Before that, you served as on -campus staff for InterVarsity at Davenport. My son, Cole, was a student at Davenport. And you also received your MDiv at…

GRTS, Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. So congratulations on that. Yep.

Gabe (00:30)
Yeah, and then also your mom, think was the one who did the catering at our wedding. so I just got to know different people in your family all around. yeah.

Shannon Popkin (00:34)
that’s right.

Yeah, so you have tasted the infamous Judy Berry bread, right? She’s famous around these here parts for her bread, her homemade bread. So yes, I know. Well, she gives that out, but multiple people have said, I tried it. I just can’t make it taste like hers. And I agree. She’s got the Judy Berry touch. yeah, so you and I gave though, we like,

Gabe (00:43)
my gosh, the bread is so good.

You can use the recipe or something, but…

Thanks.

Shannon Popkin (01:05)
have connected about story and talking about, how we enjoy story in the Bible. Or would you say that’s true? Like that you you really resonate with the story components of the Bible?

Gabe (01:16)
Absolutely. I love story. My undergrad, so before I went to seminary, my undergrad was in creative writing. And so I just, and all my brothers, we love film, we love stories, we grew up with it. then I remember, I think, when I first originally came to your teach and equip class or something that talked about the power of story and just I loved hearing

Shannon Popkin (01:24)
That’s it.

Yeah.

Gabe (01:42)
your side of it as well and the value you had for story also in the scriptures.

Shannon Popkin (01:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Gabe is referring to teachequip .com. It’s a teaching organization started by our friends Kelly Needham and Lindsay Schott, who’ve both been guests here on the podcast. And I facilitated a Michigan group, a Grand Rapids chapter last year. And Gabe, you were so kind to come. I mean, our ladies loved.

the stuff that you shared in that class. We had, I think, about a dozen women who went through this course on how to teach the Bible. And so what the stuff that you brought and shared in like your practical ideas were so, so helpful. So we’re gonna have to have you back to that.

So, I knew we were gonna be talking about a story today. And I’m thumbing through this book, How to Read the Bible as Literature and Get More Out of It by Leland Reichen. I have had this book since college. So that is, goes back quite a ways for me, Gabe.

So this is like 30 some years ago that I started, I first read this book. And when I look back on my college experience, my favorite class was literature of the Bible. I went to Liberty University, and I just chose it as an elective just kind of randomly. And so I think, you know, the Lord was stirring something in me back then that I,

just had no idea of, but this book, just captured so much the stirring in my heart as I opened the Bible. And it was more than just a book chronicling events. There’s literature, there’s a literary aspect of the Bible.

Gabe (03:21)
Yeah, yeah, no, I love that because I think a lot of times we can just look at the Bible and think it’s just either lists, like people here have lists and do’s and don’ts or commands or letters, but there’s really a story component to it.

Shannon Popkin (03:35)
Yes, yeah, there’s an overarching story. But then in the 66 books that make up the Bible, most of them use story as a medium to communicate truth.

So, you know, there’s a difference in the Bible and elsewhere between literary and expository writing. So expository or explaining.

The idea behind this kind of writing is to give information. The person wants to be very objective, very clear. They want to be concise. It’s sort of like think about a newspaper article about an event that happened or a movie.

Gabe (04:12)
very different. I think like in a lot of speech classes, we’re trained to like, say, this is what I’m going to tell you, then you tell them what you’re going to tell them. And then you finish by telling them what you told them. And that’s like really good for like transmitting information. But like if you had a movie that just told you this is everything that’s going to happen. then they recap it at the end, I mean,

Shannon Popkin (04:32)
Right.

Gabe (04:37)
it would almost feel boring because you already know what’s going to happen. There’s no tension.

Shannon Popkin (04:41)
Yeah, yeah, so tension is always a part of storytelling, right? If there is no tension, there’s no story. If there’s no conflict, if there’s nothing that causes you to want to turn the page, to want to read forward, it’s not really a story, right? And that’s what we see in the Bible.

Like there is all this tension in the overarching storyline of the Bible, but then in the, like I said, in the shorter stories, but if you look at the overarching story, the tension is, you know, God created this perfect world and then Adam and Eve sinned against God and the tension is, what’s God gonna do? Is he going to give them what they deserve, which is, you he already told them, you’re surely gonna die if you eat from this tree.

and he’s been nothing but good to them and what they deserve is separation from God and wrath from him. immediately after their sin, he promises, he just plants the seed that he’s going to send a savior to crush this enemy. But that tension, that’s Genesis 3 .15, right, is the first mention of the gospel. And that tension is held until…

We don’t know who the only thing we know about the savior is that he’s gonna be born of a woman. That’s it. That’s all we know. And so as the story unfolds, as the pages turn with each new baby that’s born, we’re asking like, okay, is this the savior? Is it this one? So first we have Cain and Abel and we’re like, which is, is it gonna be one of these? No, one of them dies. The other one is the murder. Okay, it’s not gonna be. And so this tension is held.

all the way until Matthew 27 when Jesus dies on the cross. Like that represents thousands of years of holding this tension.

Gabe (06:26)
I think also like, you know, as it keeps unfolding, you keep getting more like clues like, okay, now you realize, okay, it’s not just going to be, someone from Adam and Eve, but it’s also like from the line of David, you know, and all of a sudden you see this, this line of David’s story come up and now it kind of like narrows who this person will be and you’re kind of just waiting and you see a whole slew of people who fail to reach that.

you people who like Solomon, like who start off with so much good and then all of a sudden end with tragedy. And so it’s interesting because like you’ll see a lot of these people that almost are foreshadowing the one who’s to come, the Savior, pale in comparison to what he actually is. different elements of their story that foreshadow it. So Jesus even says,

one greater than Solomon is here you know and Solomon was like a a foreshadowing of that but Jesus shows what he truly should have been so anyways I just think interesting to see

Shannon Popkin (07:23)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah, all of the types in the Bible, it’s like there’s images that are given that point to a better image. Hebrews talks constantly about the better, the better, the better. Jesus is the better, Moses, I think. so we…

throughout these different generations in the story, we’re asking like, is this the one? Is this the one born of the woman who is gonna save us from this major conflict, the major tension of sin and being separated from God and death? Like that’s the tension of the whole Bible is sin, separation and death.

Gabe (07:59)
an even what you mentioned about like how it started with Adam and Eve right in the garden and like any good stories they’ll they’ll foreshadow the resolution way at the start so you know you see at the start like when the curse happens there’s thorns that come like those are kind of like the symbol of the curse and then when Jesus comes finally and is crucified they put a crown of thorns on his head so it’s like

a lot of the things that are elements way at the start are brought into fruition or brought back again there. So anyways, I love that idea of seeing story through it.

Shannon Popkin (08:37)
Yeah, I remember reading Leland Reckon says, we would do well to trace concrete images throughout the Bible versus just the theological themes. Like if you were to trace thorns through the Bible or like, you know, Nancy Guthrie has a book about empty, you know, the empty things that are, you know, ending with the empty tomb or

wilderness, wilderness is a theme in the Bible and there’s, they bring this consistency. And when we encounter them, we’re like, I didn’t see that coming. It’s, know, it’s exciting when tying those together, right?

Gabe (09:11)
Yeah, I yeah, it’s all through the Bible. They were they were very conscious of themes. So and I know Nancy Guthrie, by the way, I didn’t know you in the first so yeah. Well, I know her husband better because he was one of my professors at seminary so

Shannon Popkin (09:20)
you do know her personally?

okay, I didn’t realize that. Yes, I love Nancy. I’ve had her as a guest on the podcast here. I I like to think of her as a friend. She’s so highly, such high regard for her. But yes, and she does such a great job of like biblical theology of tracing these themes through the Bible.

Gabe (09:35)
on the street.

Shannon Popkin (09:56)
But back to this idea of literary versus expository, with expository the idea is short form, it’s like deductive. It’s like propositions, right? we could take any number of the stories of the Bible and reduce them.

to these propositions, you know? So for instance, consider the commandment, do not kill, in contrast with the story of Cain and Abel, like we mentioned, you could deduce from the story of Cain and Abel that murder is wrong and bad, right? You could, but

taking a story and reducing it to the most simple truths, that does take away something, doesn’t it?

Gabe (10:41)
It does. And there’s parts in the Bible where you just get the proposition, right? But I think that a story sticks better, a proposition even sticks better when there’s a story behind it. That’s why I’m even really conscious of what I’m watching on TV or movies or shows, because they are preaching to us. know, they’re preaching to our kids because there’s

Shannon Popkin (10:52)
Yeah.

that’s so good.

Gabe (11:04)
there’s propositions behind the story, like you’re saying. And so, like growing up, I watched, you know, Star Wars and Rocky, and I can remember these stories really well. I can almost hear the Rocky music, you know, in my head.

Shannon Popkin (11:17)
you

Gabe (11:18)
the name but it’s it’s like there’s a there are messages behind those stories that we watch and so it’s like we have to pay attention to what are we allowing to program our brains and the story sticks much more powerfully than if i just tell you the command

Shannon Popkin (11:24)
Yes.

Yeah, we wouldn’t watch a show that just told us what is being proposed in the story line if it was just slides that said certain propositions, Like life has no meaning or life is painful and laborious and there is not, like we wouldn’t watch that but yet.

We watch these shows that are communicating these things. And so I think it’s really important that we have conversations, If you watch a movie together, then afterward turn and say, okay, what were the truths that were being proposed? What propositions were made in this story?

Gabe (12:13)
Yeah, like in a recent sermon, I used an example from a Pixar Monsters Inc. You know, like, actually, it was Monsters University, in it, it made a statement about because there’s a character that cheats to try and help a friend.

Shannon Popkin (12:20)
I remember.

Gabe (12:31)
of his win, okay, and in his mind he’s doing it to help the friend. But when the friend realizes that this whole machine got rigged in his favor to just help him win, it showed him that his friend did not believe in him. And so I think like the proposition that I walked away with from that movie was like, if you cheat to help somebody win, it actually shows you don’t believe in

Like you can just funnel it down to what is that like one nugget that one thing that’s being said by the story?

Shannon Popkin (13:02)
Yeah, was, it so served your sermon. I used that as an example with our Teach Equip Women. I’m like, okay, here’s a great example of an illustration that didn’t detract from the sermon, it actually supported, it helped us to understand it more clearly, right? And what was the point in the sermon? you?

Gabe (13:24)
Well, the point was, was Genesis 17 where in order to like help God succeed, Sarai decides to, have Abram sleep with Hagar to try and help God’s promises come into play. And so in a sense, she was cheating to try and help God win. And…

Shannon Popkin (13:45)
Yeah, yeah.

Gabe (13:47)
And I use that story because I could just say, you know, if we cheat or break the rules to help God’s promises happen, I can just say that proposition. But if people can feel the story, if they can emotionally connect with what it feels like when someone doesn’t believe in you, all of a sudden that story or that proposition or that idea that I’m cheating to help God win shows that I actually don’t trust or believe in his power.

They can feel that in a new way.

Shannon Popkin (14:16)
Yeah, yeah, I think I said in my book, Shaped by God’s Premises, anytime you think God needs your help, you’re not really surrendering

You’re not gonna give control to a God who you think needs your help, right? And so, yeah, it’s just kind of another way to look at that or think through that story. yeah, that story of Sarah and Hagar, such an important story in the Bible. And it encapsulates so much of the human experience, which is why I wanted to write this book, things that are out of our control, you know, like our bodies, she’s not able to have a baby, right?

being promised things by God and dealing with the dissonance between here’s what I’ve been promised, but here’s what I’m experiencing and they do not match up, right? And the experience of waiting, decades of waiting, waiting on God, right? And it’s just all of these human experiences wrapped in the overarching story of God promising a savior and

like them being part of that promise of the Savior, right?

Gabe (15:17)
when things are like there’s a story behind it or connected to that proposition, I think that that it sticks more, but also like we can feel it more. it’s not moved from just our head to our heart. Like we can, there’s a motion connected to it.

Shannon Popkin (15:27)
Yeah.

Yes. And you know what? That leads me. I was going to just give you these four advantages that Riken gives in his book. He just kind of throws these in there, but I thought they were so profound. How to read the Bible’s literature, four advantages of literature as a medium. First of all, he says memorable, right? So story is memorable. And this is all types of literature, but specifically story, I think is very memorable. In fact, like our brains,

Gabe (15:52)
Okay.

Shannon Popkin (15:59)
are hardwired to remember story, to return to story. Yes.

Gabe (16:03)
Yeah, I would agree with that. like if you ask a kid what they learned in a Sunday school, like they might not know. But if you say what you know, is there a story you heard? They might be able to recite the whole thing because.

Shannon Popkin (16:14)
Yeah, exactly.

Like just think about the most recent sermon or podcast that you listen to, what are you gonna be able to best remember? It’s the stories, but the stories, they’re not just standalone. like you were saying, Gabe, these movies that we watch or shows or literature,

Gabe (16:15)
Please.

Shannon Popkin (16:32)
novels that we’re reading, they are making propositions, truth propositions about life. so but the, the story is what helps us to hold on to them and process them. Yes.

Gabe (16:42)
Absolutely and if I’m ever preaching to a room and I feel like people are zoning out or tuning out if I just say there was this one time I know immediately I have everybody’s attention again because

Shannon Popkin (16:55)
Okay, you just gave away the second thing that he said. So the first one is memorable, the second is capture attention, right? That’s what stories do. Like exactly what you just said. This one time, our minds are all shifted into a different way of thinking. Like now that we have neurology and we can watch brain scans of how people’s brains interact.

Gabe (16:58)
I was just…

Yep.

Shannon Popkin (17:17)
There’s a different part of your brain that lights up when you’re hearing a story. And what I think is so interesting, I think I’ve shared this on this podcast before, in talk like Ted, you know, about Ted talks, they quote this brain science of when you as a speaker are sharing a story, your audience, they call it neurocoupling, your audience, the part of your brain as you tell the story is the same part of the…

audience as they hear the story. Isn’t that intriguing?

Gabe (17:45)
are you saying that you like can feel it too, like the same emotion?

Shannon Popkin (17:48)
It’s the same, let’s say you’re listing out facts, you’re using one part of your brain, your audience is using a different part. You’re not using the same part of your brain, but stories and telling the story and in receiving the story, they call it neurocoupling, you’re using, and I don’t remember which part of the brain, but yeah, so it’s like, it’s connecting you with your audience. And so if you back up and think about God wanting to communicate,

Gabe (18:05)
Yeah, that’s still fascinating though.

Shannon Popkin (18:15)
like with human beings and the fact that he uses story and he designed our brains. And so like there’s in a sense, there’s this neuro coupling with God. He let this story unfold about a father who gives his son so that there can be reconciliation and redemption. He didn’t have to make salvation unfold that way.

It could have just been propositional truths but God wanted us to feel what he feels about our sin. And so he sent his only son and that son died.

right, and felt the Father withdraw. You know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? we enter this story and we feel it. I just think that is so intriguing to think about our God wanted us to experience, you know, the difference between expository and literary is expository wants to just proclaim truth.

but literature wants to show you the truth, show, not tell, right? We’re entering in. So anyway, I just, find that all very intriguing. So the first one is memorable, second, capture attention, and the third is stories affect us, they mobilize us. We are affected by the stories that we hear. And that’s, mean, when you think about

Gabe (19:30)
Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (19:35)
preaching or when you, I when you look at the Bible, so you and I, we’re, we’re going to segue and talk about being communicators of story here in a second. But I just think like God is preaching to us, like we’re the audience and he’s telling a story in the Bible and he wants to mobilize us. He wants us to be affected by this story. Right.

Gabe (19:54)
yeah, like I think that when you’re hearing a story, you almost automatically are using your imagination, like it’s activating your imagination, and you’re imagining yourself participating at some level in the story. And so I think what a story does is it’s like an informal way to invite people into the story of God.

Shannon Popkin (20:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Gabe (20:14)
like the story of Acts is the story of Luke, you the story of Jesus, the gospel being retold through the church and showing how we can participate in the gospel. We participate in the resurrection. And so like when we see those elements and we realize it’s not just a story about Jesus, but it’s an invitation to us as listeners to live that out. you know, the retelling of Jesus’ story in our lives.

Shannon Popkin (20:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So true,

Acts 1 -1 says, I wrote the first narrative, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up. So that was just the beginning. And then here, it’s the unfolding, like the effect of this story. It’s like, the people who have heard and understood the story of Jesus, they are affected by it in powerful ways. I mean, people are gonna lose their lives in Acts, right?

their worlds are gonna be turned upside down. They’re gonna leave their homes. Everything is gonna change for them because of this story that they have not just been a spectator and watched unfold the drama unfolding. No, it’s affecting them. It’s gonna change the rest of their lives.

Gabe (21:28)
Yeah, and I think like you see like Luke 2, the Holy Spirit descends on Mary and Jesus is conceived and then Acts 2, the Holy Spirit descends on the church and the church is born. And so like these parallels I think of not just a story, but now you’re a participant in that story.

Shannon Popkin (21:41)
interesting, yeah.

Okay, I gotta interject one of my favorite imagery parallels in the Bible, because you brought up Pentecost, right? It’s like the Tower of Babel is we have one language that the whole world speaks, and we’ve got these people building this tower, trying to reach God on their own self -reliance and power, making a name for themselves. And then,

Gabe (21:58)
That’s it.

Shannon Popkin (22:15)
God disperses them across the face of the earth, many different languages. And then the following chapter, you have God saying, I’m gonna select my man, his name is Abraham, Abram, and I’m gonna make his name great. And through him, all the nations will be blessed. And so that promise, the tension is held like, what is this thing with all the nations? It’s held all the way until Acts two, when we have Pentecost and here.

we have a situation where a whole bunch of people who speak all different languages all hear the same sermon in their own language. And it’s this story about Jesus. And this is the church is being born. And so it’s like going from one people to many languages. And now from many languages into one people group who are all focused not on making a name for themselves, but lifting up the name of Jesus. I just love that.

Gabe (23:08)
Yeah, it’s so powerful just to see those connections like that.

Shannon Popkin (23:11)
Yeah, I mean, like that one, when I first saw that, I was like, whoa, like the Bible is such, it has such a unified storyline. It’s really fun to discover those and not just intellectually fun and cool, but it affects us, right? For me, when I was writing my book on Shaped by God’s Promises for me,

to recognize that when God said to Abram, through you all the nations of the world will be blessed, that meant so much to me because I’m not Jewish, right? And so like through a lot of the Bible, it feels like God has this favoritism toward the nation of Israel. He selects one nation out of many and he blesses them and he protects them and other nations are slaughtered, right? And God gives his favor just to the Israelites, the family of Abram.

But what is so helpful and powerful is that even when God gave that first promise to Abram, he was thinking of me, right? through Jesus, all the nations will be blessed. And so I wasn’t just an afterthought. From the beginning, God had in mind that he wanted to save me and save you and save people who listen to this podcast from all over the world. All of us were being thought of.

when God made these promises to Abram.

Gabe (24:27)
Yeah, so cool. I love that.

Shannon Popkin (24:28)
Yeah, so, all right, so we’ve got memorable capture tension, stories affect us, they mobilize us, they change us. And then the last one is what you kind of were alluding to earlier. These stories or literature, they do justice to the complexity of human life.

Gabe (24:45)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (24:46)
So the human life is so complex and the emotions that we feel and the just, mean, we’re complex beings. so what the losses that we experience and the longings and the hopes and the joys and all of it, you know, is all intermingled. And a story captures that more than just an expository teaching, right? And so it.

it allows us to, you know, we talked about the story of Hagar and Sarah. It’s a very complex story. You know, I’m sure when you were preaching it, every time that I go, cause I’ve written on Hagar and Sarah in my book, Control Girl, and then in my book, Shaped by Guest Promises, and it always leads me to Galatians, and I just do a deep dive again on Galatians, I read the whole book several times, and I’m like, this is so hard to get my arms around. It’s very, very complex, so many moving pieces, and yet it’s,

without that storyline, it would be harder to grasp the truth that is being portrayed.

Gabe (25:43)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But the complexity part you’re mentioning, I think like a lot of times, we long to have someone come alongside us and just be human and show that they understand us and And so that’s why like, I love the story of David, because I’m reading the story of someone who is not perfect, but

God used his story of imperfection to bring about so many powerful things. So like you have a man who, you he has some good moments of courage, like fighting Goliath. And then you see some moments of weakness where he actually is the person who he betrays a friend, Uriah, and ends up leading to this guy’s death, his murder.

Shannon Popkin (26:14)
Yeah.

Gabe (26:26)
then also taking Bathsheba and the affair that happens there and the brokenness, but also how God redeems that and and just there’s so much stories of redemption. think any story of redemption is really helpful for humans because it’s like, you know that there’s someone who’s walking alongside you that understands. Like I think that the function of story, like a story can be for, you know, for mobilizing people.

but it also can be for building common ground. I think somebody’s, it’s more like David is like very relatable to people, to what it means to be human, very earthy.

Shannon Popkin (26:56)
sure.

Yeah, for sure. And in that story, like we’re looking at this man who is after God’s own heart. How can a person who is after God’s own heart do such heinous things? Like kill his friend, his close companion, and take his wife and lie about it and cheat. It was just like, how can this be? And yet it helps us, like, because I look at that in my own life, you know? How can I?

Gabe (27:15)
Bye.

Shannon Popkin (27:27)
a woman who loves God and seeks after God. How can I treat my husband with such disrespect? How can I be such a horrible mom to my kids? Like, how can I fail in such horrific ways? And yet the redemption, you know, the redemption that God, there was restoration for David. There was a consequence. He lost his son, which was,

there was suffering and not all of our suffering has a one -to -one parallel between our sin and our suffering, but sometimes there is, you know? And so we learn that in this story. And yet we also have a God who’s patient and kind and like after David mourns, you know, after his son dies, he gets up and he washes and he eats and he moves forward. And so we learn about the complexity of grief and sorrow. And he says, you know, I won’t go,

or my son won’t come back to me, but I will go to him. And so there’s hope, intermingled. Yeah, dealing with the complexities. Well, Gabe, this has been a fabulous conversation. think we need to do a part two, because I do want to get to communicator, you know, ideas with storytelling. And so let’s cap it off here and pick it up next time.

But thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I just love talking about the Bible, about story. let’s talk about some of these things next time.

Gabe (28:44)
That sounds great. Thank you so much for having me.