“Telling stories about your work is essential: It generates awareness, it inspires others, and it creates change.“
The Arukah Network is a global community health network working in multiple cities across India. They develop community clusters or networks that work together on local and regional health care initiatives.
The Arukah network uses storytelling as one of the ways that it raises awareness, inspires others, and creates change. It recommends using a “STAR” Storytelling model to create simple, high-impact stories.
STAR stands for
- Situation – The background or problem the network started with
- Task – Your network’s response to this challenge
- Action – How did you complete the tasks? What skills used?
- Result – What was the outcome and affect it had?
If your network effort has achieved its desired outcomes, describe the result in terms of the change or impact that you’ve seen.
In the case of early-stage efforts where the outcome has not yet been accomplished, describe the benefits, learnings, or progress instead.
A STAR Story Example
A group of pastors decided to work together to reach an unreached people group. The partnership realized that two cities among this people group did not have any churches or pastors ministering there. We looked for a way to build relationships and share the gospel. After research, our partnership decided to start a community health clinic. In one year, these conversations have lead us to start three Discovery Bible Groups, which we pray will result in several house churches.
Resources
- “Storytelling: The Star Technique“. The Arukah Network – Academy Tools. 2019.
This is a very good article since we who are community of faith must learn how to tell stories. Stories run the world. However I think there should be a space in storytelling where we embrace failure and lessons learnt in the process of accomplishing the task. We are living in a world that is driven by ideals and we find that organizations always share their success stories but they hesitate to post things within the program that make them lament.
In essence we hide pain and reject the notion that programs and ministry activities are not all about celebrations but there are moments of pain and lament.