When Story Becomes Community

The group was smaller than expected. The hope had been for six to eight people, but only five women showed up. Most were mothers of young children, ranging from newborn-stage parenting to elementary school drop-offs, all from the same large church. And as sometimes happens in large churches, finding community can take some intentionality.   

Before the first Story Circle night was over, Lisa said out loud what the others were already feeling. “I think we found something.” No one quite knew what to call it yet. 

They had come looking for community, though most of them had not said it that plainly before the group began. Week after week, they returned to the circle and said the same thing in different words: “This is what I needed,” “I look forward to this every week,” “This is my breath of fresh air.” 

The format was simple. They gathered, listened to one another’s stories, listened to a story of Jesus, and resisted the urge to do what most have learned to do in vulnerable moments, like interrupt, analyze, and fix. After each person shared, the group simply said thank you and moved on. It did not take long for the women to trust it. 

What surprised their facilitator, Katherine, was not that the practice worked, but how quickly it worked.  An English major by training and, in her words, “a nerd” about the power of story, she had never doubted that stories could shape people. But, these were not longtime friends. They knew one another in the loose way people often do in church life, but this particular group of five had never gathered together like this before. And yet almost immediately, something shifted between them. 

The moment that made it undeniable came during the sessions on suffering, grief, death, and loss. Katherine was pregnant at the time and, as she later joked, “a little hormonal,” which made the subject feel close even before the stories began. One of the women was experiencing loss in real-time during this season of life. Everyone in the room knew grief was not theoretical that week. Before the gathering, Katherine quietly told the participant that they did not need to come if the subject felt too close. They came anyway, having known that the space and these women could hold the grief. 

That night, the story of Jesus’s death was told through the eyes of Mary. Katherine barely made it through the reading. She cried. The women cried. The group was snotty and gross, but no one looked away. No one apologized for tears. No one rushed to make the room feel lighter. 

They stayed. 

“It was as divine as anything could get,” Katherine would later say. “With something so tragic and horrible, it knit our group together.” 

By the end of the sessions, the women had made a decision that seven meetings would not be enough. They would keep going. Because what they found in that circle was not just a program that worked. 

It was the kind of community they had been looking for all along.