The STS journey begins (and maybe ends) with a question: “What’s your story?”
That’s not a question we get asked very often. We get asked about our family or what we do for living or where we’re from originally or where we went to school or what we like to do with our free time. It’s not that we don’t like stories. Entire industries have been built around our consumption of stories. We’re just not used to thinking of our own real, everyday lives as stories, even though our lives fit a story’s description—we all have a beginning and a middle and we know we’ll all have an end, and the course of our lives follows a trajectory of conflict, struggle and resolution.
We live in the middle of the story of our lives, with unique—although sometimes forgotten or buried—gifts, talents, passions and experiences, and the question is, “How will we use these tools to attempt to shape the story of our lives?”
In many ways the STS journey is an invitation to explore our answers to that question, to uncover our unique and always unfolding “calling” in life. We like to call it look at it as “our true vocation.” We understand it to be, at its most fundamental level, a true “calling of service,” and it is something we believe applies not just to individuals, but also to groups of friends, families, and all kinds of grassroots communities. It’s a 24/7 calling and it ties into the larger story of humanity, in which we all have a unique part to play.
We’ve developed a narrative-based process to help people “listen” to their story. Here are some reasons why you should consider going through it:
- Do it for others — We realize some people have, like those we highlight here, already done a lot of the hard work of listening to their own stories and learning how their own passion connects to the needs of others around them. If that’s true of you, consider going through “Your story is key” to help facilitate the process with your friends, family or coworkers.
- Do it with others — “Your story is key” works best if it’s done in the context of some sort of community, such as a faith community, or a group of guys, of moms, of college students, of friends or of coworkers. Parts of it need to be completed individually, but enlisting a safe, trusted sounding board makes the whole process richer, more useful and more multi-dimensional.
- Do it to discover — Our story-based process supplements, not replaces, other more cut-and-dried personality-, vocational-, or gifting-focused tests. We’ve taken many of them and have found some of their results helpful, but they tend to force people into a limited range of suitable roles, whether the focus is on job performance, team dynamics, choosing from among a fixed list of acceptable professions or identifying leadership styles and roles. We’ve created a more open-ended process, because we don’t want people to have to fit themselves into any pre-determined boxes. We do have a goal in mind — the pursuit of true vocation, which as Frederick Buechner masterfully put it, is “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” — but the way people choose to live out and express their unique calling may not exist on any current lists of possibilities. That’s ok! We don’t recall “orphanage founder,” “master fundraiser while stay-at-home-mom” or “clean-water-well-builder-while-airline-pilot” as being on any list of vocations we’ve seen. Let your own story be your guide, informed by others you trust, by the larger story we’re all a part of, and by the needs of the world around you.
- Do it to “integrate” your life — We created “Your story is key” for all the communities of which we’re a part, because we believe true calling applies not only to individuals, but also to communities of all kinds, including families, groups of friends and faith communities, as well as neighborhoods, towns, and nations. We’re finding that the more each of us attempt to go through this process for the different “communities” or “worlds” we live in (our groups of friends, family, faith community, jobs, etc.), the more integrated they all become.
- Do it for the adventure — We refer to “Your Story is Key” as a process, but what it really is is a journey. It’s not over just because you’ve answered its last question or completed it’s final exercise for the first time. Listening to the story of our lives and identifying our true callings of service takes a lifetime of trial and error, effort and exploration. It’s something we all need to revisit regularly, individually and corporately. It’s always provisional. It doesn’t lend itself to clear-cut, absolutely final answers, because life and people and the needs of the world aren’t always clear cut.
Click HERE to begin the “Listen to Your Story” journey for yourself.
You may never look at your life or your community in the same way again.
