What does it look like to live with real intentionality in every area of one’s life? To see one’s vocation harmonizing with every aspect of one’s purpose? As you can imagine, that’s not an easy proposition. It seems that in everyday life, so many good opportunities call out to us. Yet every opportunity isn’t always the best opportunity. If you were to look at your life much like a story being written, what story would you want to tell? God invites us to participate in His story, and He wants us to imagine the purpose and impact we intend to make.
God’s method is us, but the mission is His. The great author of history is telling a beautiful, redemptive story of His Creation. He works with us to restore and reconcile all things back to the Creator’s design. Our individual story is meant to carry the creation mandate, and we are invited to co-create with the Creator. This becomes real when we understand our Kingdom contribution.
Within the context of community, we commit to living out our storyline. This is how our Creator walks us into a transformational journey, one in which our vocation becomes less about what we do and more about who we are. It becomes about those with whom He has asked us to live and work. At The Table, we have set a place for you where you can discover your unique transformational storyline and begin to author your mission. The discovery of your mission will help you understand your unique contribution to God’s creation mandate.
That challenge led me to re-evaluate my own vocation, to step out and to permission some new projects that aligned with my story arch. One facet of what I now do is work with others to help them explore their dreams. I love unlocking the dreams in others so that they can pursue meaning for their life. What if the dreams we hold are the seeds of God’s Kingdom? When we come together to put our seeds in the ground, the resulting growth begins to make the earth look more like heaven. When that happens, people begin to set a plumb line for authentic and intentional living.
As someone who is always working with others to land ideas, launch new initiatives, or find the courage to take a risk and go for their dream, I have observed patterns in how people process how their dreams will be achieved. I started to notice how helping others discover their story was a key to helping them unlock their dreams. Because dreams are never realized in isolation, we need others to help us realize the dream and to live our story. Our transformational story is meant to be lived out in the context of community. As we commit to our story, we make an intentional contribution with our lives.
What has developed from those realizations is a workshop that I call Story Lab. The idea around Story Lab was to look at every life as a story. In the workshop, we borrow language from the elements an author uses when writing a story. We start with the idea that our character wants something and must overcome conflict to get it. This requires us to define what our object of desire is and to commit to doing what it takes to achieve it. It is critical for us to know what we want if we are going to author a story that we are excited about. The invitation to the Creator’s purpose in us will leap from the pages of our life as we begin to craft how we are going to live life. This determines the quality of the story we are telling.
As we push and pull the ideas of our story within a Story Lab weekend, we discover that telling a story with our lives requires us to be transformed. A character in a story will ultimately be transformed by the living out of their story. A character is what he or she does. It is important that we remember that we simply cannot just write our story – we must live it. This is the exciting part of every Story Lab, because it requires us to commit to our life with real intentionality. When people begin to live with real intentionality, big dreams and goals are realized.
The story lab workshop can be a catalysis to help people risk their hopes on living a good story- by that I mean finding a team of people doing hard work for a noble cause and join them.” Story lab participant, and best-selling author Dr. Cindy Trimm, said of her experience. “By defining your core desire, your core value, and your core cause, you will be able to articulate the controlling idea of your story—somewhat like a personal mission statement. A controlling idea, a desired direction, will help direct your life much like the North Star provides a fixed-point sailors use to maintain a ship’s bearing.”
Each time I facilitate a Story Lab, I get to see people discover how to fight the drift of giving up on their own story. If we settle for good enough, we will miss the opportunity to live out our purpose and join our heavenly Father in an epic story that He is telling through His creation. Story Lab is a frequently held workshop hosted by The Table. Join us and discover how your story can unlock your contribution to your community of family and friends, ultimately spreading into your workplace and neighborhood. We need to have a Jesus Movement Mentality in which we see every area of life as an opportunity to display Jesus’ Kingdom, His words, His works, and His way. Let me know if you would like to learn more about Story Lab.