Sharing Their Story (STS) is a faith-based, grassroots network that helps ordinary people:
- Listen to the story of their special calling of service,
- Learn the story of tangible local and global need, and,
- Live a new story that does justice to both.
STS is “faith-based.” As followers of Jesus, we believe we’ve been called to help bring about the healing and restoration of God’s good creation and to herald and attempt to live out a new reality and way of life in which we help feed the hungry, welcome the stranger and care for the sick.
STS is “grassroots.” We believe ordinary people are ideal catalysts for meeting the greatest challenges facing our neighborhoods, our cities and our world. We hope the true stories of service in the face of suffering that we highlight on our website and share in our presentations in person, help prompt the “sharing” of many more similar stories in the future.
STS is a “network.” We help make connections between ordinary people, the story of need and experts working “on the ground.”
Here are a few things that make STS unique:
- As our name suggests, we use the metaphor of “story” to share our message because we believe it speaks powerfully and practically to questions of individual and corporate purpose and the deep needs of the world around us.
- We’ve designed “Listen to Your Story,” an in-depth, narrative-based process to help ordinary people understand their own life story, dream about their story as it could be, and begin to incorporate the two.
- We trace a larger story of which we’re all a part, in the hope of pointing to the common ground of human “vocation” or calling.
- We believe callings of service apply not only to individuals, but also to families, faith communities, and other communities, such as groups of moms, college students, friends and coworkers.
- We’ve created a special wiki to serve as a center for learning about the tangible needs of the world around us, and we invite and encourage contributions about specific problems, groups of people and places from anyone with relevant experience or expertise.
- We believe most people want to help, or would want to if they only knew the story of need all around them, but they get overwhelmed, think they’re not qualified, or otherwise don’t know where or how to start. Our Three Practices tool kit addresses all those issues and more.
We’d love it if you journeyed with use in any or all of the following ways:
- Follow us on Facebook or Twitter,
- Become a “Story-sharer,” and,
- Contact us to tell us about a story that needs to be told, to ask us to present to your group, or if you have any questions for us.
Sharing Their Story is an initiative of Global Service Associates, a non-profit, 501(c)3 association of entrepreneurs in mission.
