What a blessing it has been to hear Dennis Dewey and Lynn White tell the stories of the Bible.
I first met Dennis a few years ago when Bob Criswell and I attended a conference sponored by our presbytery on biblical storytelling. Here's a little inside scoop - Bob and Dennis both sang with the smae barbershop quartet.
Dennis is very gifted. God has blessed him with a special way of making the living Word of God truly living - the words become alive aas he shares them!
Dennis has been serving as the designated pastor at Stone Presbyterian Church in Clinton, NY - about 6 miles from Utica, NY where Dennis and his family live. While on this sacred journey, Dennis was approved as the called pastor for this parish. Congratualtions to Dennis and the congregation. May both grow in theor relationship with one another and the Lord as together they love and serve.
The following bio on Dennis appears on the website:http://www.dennisdewey.org/den_bio.html
Dennis Dewey has performed and led storytelling seminars all over North America, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, South Africa and Israel. Ordained as a minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA), he has been engaged full time in this itinerant, ecumenical ministry of biblical story since 1992.
"The way to open the scriptures to post-literate culture," Dewey says, "is to let people hear these powerfully entertaining stories as they were originally experienced: as breath and sound and life, not as silent ink on paper."
Dennis Dewey has been a featured presenter at the annual Festival Gathering of the Network of Biblical Storytellers (NOBS), and has performed and/or taught at hundreds of churches and at institutions such as Princeton Theological Seminary's Institute of Theology, the Joseph Campbell Festival, the National Storytelling Festival, and the 209th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
In 1997 he performed for 36,000 Lutheran youth in the New Orleans Superdome and in 1998 for the Thanksgiving Day television special "A Gift of Stories".
Dewey is a graduate of Hartwick College, where he majored in philosophy but lived in the theater, and of Princeton Theological Seminary, where his academic concentration was in liturgy. He also holds a Masters Degree equivalency in education from the State University of New York. He makes his home in Utica, New York with his wife and three children.
Dr. Thomas G. Long, noted homiletics scholar and author says, "Dennis Dewey does not merely memorize the texts; he absorbs them, embodies them."
Dr. Thomas Boomershine, co-founder of the Network of Biblical Storytellers says, "Dewey's the best there is!"
Here's an article written by Dennis on how he became a biblical storyteller:
HOW I BECAME THE WORLD'S ONLY PROFESSIONAL BIBLICAL STORYTELLER
by Dennis Dewey http://www.dennisdewey.org/backstory.html
The old man approached me slowly, shifted his cane to his left hand and extended his right to me. He shook my hand with an earnest grip too young for his years. His eyes brimming with tears, he spoke in a quiet but firm voice, "I've been going to church all my life, but I never heard the gospel till tonight!" At moments like this, I know WHY I do what I do. What I had just done that evening was to perform the stories of John's Gospel nearly verbatim from the scripture text.
I am a biblical storyteller. I tell the stories of the scriptures in the words in which they have been traditioned to us in a way that give expression to their liveliness, much as a virtuoso gives faithful, passionate expression to the notes of a score. When audiences tell me that I make the stories come alive, I remind them, "The stories already ARE alive; I just try not to KILL them!" Gratifying responses are not infrequent from my audiences; they inspire and humble me. And I have come to stand in awe of the power that these ancient stories have to move people, to change lives, and to challenge the powers.
When I feel long-winded, I describe myself as "a professional, itinerant, ecumenical minister of biblical story." This ministry, in addition to performance, entails leading workshops and retreats in which I help others discover their storytelling gifts and encounter biblical story not as "text out there," but as living reality experienced from the inside-out. Having explained the nature of my work, I usually hear next the question, "And you make a living at this?" By the grace of God, yes, not only do I make a living at it, but my work has grown year by year. Now in my seventh year at this vocation, I have finally discovered that this is what I wanted to do when I grew up!
I began doing biblical storytelling my first year in the parish. And I had no idea that it would change my life. At that time, moreover, I did not yet call it "storytelling" but "drama." The important distinction in nomenclature would come later in the evolution of my craft. On Palm Sunday I performed for the first time the passion narrative from the Gospel of Mark in lieu of a sermon. The response was electric! People were moved to tears. Many told me that they had never experienced anything like this before, that I had a real gift, that I should do more of this. So in 1980 I signed up for continuing education event with Tom Boomershine, professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio and founder of the ">Network of Biblical Storytellers.
Tom helped me understand the overwhelming response I had experienced in telling Mark's passion story. He reminded me that the stories that became Bible (a word that means "books") were first experienced and remembered as breath and sound and noise---amusing, compelling, moving stories in which people met God. Only later were the stories downloaded to paper, eventually to be regarded more as "ideas" frozen in silent ink than as lively adventures in communal imagination. Tom gave me the terminology "storytelling" to designate more accurately what I had previously referred to as dramatic monologue." I came to understand that storytelling, unlike theater, is immediate and direct. The storyteller engages the audiences eye-to-eye with no "suspension of disbelief" as in theater. After Tom spellbound me by telling the whole Gospel of Mark, I was hooked! I knew I had to do this, too; I had to commit the gospel to memory and perform it as story. My college theater background and the ham in my genes helped. I thought I could be pretty good at it. And over the years I got better.
Invitations came from other churches to perform. Word spread. Ranging farther and farther from home, I added the Gospel of John to my repertoire. And I began to realize that, in the best of all possible worlds, I would be a full time storyteller and teacher of storytelling. But, of course, this is the REAL world. Sure, Jesus was an itinerant storyteller, but he didn't have a family to feed!
The vocation to biblical storytelling began to emerge during a rigorous career counseling process. I underwent this counseling in the fourth year of a difficult and painful pastorate. My call to parish ministry was seriously in doubt. From the first day on the job at this, my third church, it was clear to me that my style, personality and ideas would meet strong resistance from some. But I was not prepared for the intensity of the animosity, and my defensiveness quickly made a bad situation worse.
I thought that "hanging in" was the answer, that in time, when people got to know me, they would find that I was a right sort and a pretty good pastor, too. But the pain of the conflict reached such a crescendo in my fifth year that a caring colleague advised me, "You don't need to die for the church, you know; it's already been done."
That prophetic word lifted the weight. I knew then that I had to resign my pastorate, but I also knew that I could not accept a call to church right away, even though the counseling process had confirmed that I was, indeed, suited for parish ministry---just not in this particular church. I felt too beaten up to inflict myself on another congregation. Then I remembered what had risen to the top in the career counseling: biblical storytelling. "Right," I had thought at the time. "They warned me that this process would help identify the 'horses that pull my cart,' but that practical concerns would also have to be taken into consideration before any decision was made.
I called Tom Boomershine, who had introduced me to biblical storytelling a decade earlier. He invited me to come to Dayton and to spend a day with him, exploring this vocation. I made the 12-hour pilgrimage to the Mecca of biblical storytelling on a sweltering spring day in an old beat up VW with no air conditioning. The heat added to the intensity of the experience. Tom spent time with me, patiently listening, suggesting, encouraging. He blessed me and affirmed my call, and invited me to learn from him how to lead a workshop and retreat.
I was under no illusion that I would actually be able to support my family in this most specialized of ministries. But my sense of vocation to biblical storytelling was too strong not to answer. My presbytery validated my calling, offered me the support of prayer, but left to me the minor details of the entrepreneurship: finding work and being compensated for it. Imagining that my "career" would probably last a couple years, subsidized by my good wife's income, I surmised that when I "got it out of my system" and when we ran out of savings, I would return to full time parish ministry. "Don't quit your day job" is the advice that greets all would-be artists. But was this art, or was this ministry, or was it both? Never mind. There was no way I could quit my day job---until, that is, it became clear to me that there was no way that I could NOT quit my day job.
That God moves in mysterious ways is a sublime understatement. The circumstances of my life having brought me to this point, the hard questions now arose. Did I trust God enough to do this? Could we cut back our budget and keep paying the mortgage? We did the numbers. If I could get SOME work and do some supply preaching, we thought we COULD live. We would have to dip into our savings perhaps, but our daughter was entering fifth grade and our son would start kindergarten in the fall. There would no longer be daycare expense. My wife Sue and I fretted and prayed and wrung our hands...and took the plunge. I announced my resignation six weeks hence.
Those mysterious ways in which God moves are never straight-line. On the night of my farewell dinner---the last night of a regular paycheck---I promised my wife that we would stop by the drugstore on the way home and 'waste' the money on a home pregnancy test. "It's all in your mind," I told my her, and I was convinced of it, "you're just under a lot of stress." Of course "it" was a little lower than her mind. When the donut formed in the test kit, I poured a scotch and began to cry. I cried for a week. Now I was self-employed (unemployed) minister of biblical storytelling, and soon there would be another mouth to feed! It was a moment of deep despair. Down and out. Where was God? I remembered the Peter's whining to Jesus, "Look, we have left everything and followed you!"
Within a few days of discovering that we were pregnant, Sue and I left on a two-week choir tour of England. The choir was composed of alums in their 30s, 40s and 50s, all of whom had sung with a much beloved choral director at Hartwick College. My friends all had older children. They were dealing with empty nest and grandparenthood. Here I was, at 45 years old about to be a father! The humor that was poked our way about this situation helped me to begin to lighten up. In fact, being the butt of the bus jokes was therapeutic. I began to think about this new child as bonus instead of a burden. When we returned from England and I was invited to guest preach, the lectionary texts for the next few weeks were all about the laughter of Abraham and Sarah. I lived in those stories. I felt Abraham's giddy joy. I was grateful for this gift of God, this twist in my life story. And I saw this unintended pregnancy as the covenantal sign and seal of my vocation. When Jesse was born on February 21, 1993, I called him my storytelling baby. He has celebrated every birthday of his young life in Florida, where I have done two weeks of storytelling engagements in each of the last five years!
How the pieces all come together in God's good time! Two little rural churches agreed to contract with me for part time services on an "as available" basis, giving me a base from which to work and a community in which to be grounded. Their generous willingness to be without me half of the year's Sundays reflected their commitment to share me with the world. The Network of Biblical Storytellers also contracted with me to be a consultant to and ambassador for the organization. Within a few years I had performed at the National Storytelling Festival, the Joseph Campbell Festival and at several other national events. Appropriately for a ministry of storytelling, word of my work spread, and more and more work came.
This ministry has taken me all over the United States and to Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, and Israel. I have taught clergy and laity at seminars and workshops and in churches and seminaries from coast to coast---Presbyterians, United Methodists, Roman Catholics, Mennonites, Baptists, Episcopalians and more. Perhaps my greatest thrill was to help Tom Boomershine train 75 biblical storytellers for the 1997 ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans. I performed in the superdome there for 36,000 youth, many of whom recited parts of Mark's passion narrative along with me, having learned it by heart with the help of the storytellers whom I had trained.
What is the next step God has for this ministry? I don't know; but I will be happily surprised, I'm sure. One day I realized that I had given up worrying about the security issues that had so consumed me at the beginning. God has cared for me and has opened doors for my ministry again and again. In the words of the hymn, "'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far...." No doubt someday this ministry will run its course. My voice will weaken, my strength will flag, my concentration will founder. I hope then to discern my vocation to what is next. But before grace leads me home, I hope to introduce the church of the new millennium to this new/old way of experiencing the stories of God and to make the telling of the stories as commonplace in worship as the reading of the scriptures has been since the Reformation, to re-establish this ancient practice as a way to faith in post-literate culture, to leave a legacy of budding storytellers of all ages in whom the Word lives and breathes and finds the kind of lively expression that changes the world.
Here's an interview
INTERVIEW
AS A VIRTUOSO PLAYS A STRADIVARIUS, DEWEY PERFORMS THE SCRIPTURES
by Tracy Radosevic http://www.dennisdewey.org/int_view.html
I first met Dennis Dewey when he performed the Gospel of John at Duke Divinity School for the 1993 Festival Gathering of the Network of Biblical Storytellers(NOBS). He spellbound an audience for 90 minutes as we heard and saw Nicodemus, the Woman at the Well, Peter, Judas, Mary Magdalene and John's other characters come to life before our eyes and ears.
Since that time Dennis Dewey and I have enjoyed a number of occasions when we have performed and taught together---one of the most memorable: a telling of the story of the Daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 27:1-11) for a youth group of Palestinians in Bethlehem.
Having served together on the board of NOBS, we are co-authoring a book, the working title of which is IF YOU TELL IT, THEY WILL HEAR: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE ART OF BIBLICAL STORYTELLING. My only regret about this interview is that its print format does not permit the reader to see his expressive face and hear his many voices!
HOW DID YOU GET STARTED? WHAT IS IT THAT YOU DO, AND WHY DO YOU DO IT?
As a parish pastor in 1980 I began performing Mark's passion narrative as a "dramatic monologue" (as I then described it). The response was electric. People were excited that "the story came alive!" The next year I took a continuing education course in biblical storytelling with Tom Boomershine (he's a professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary and the founder of the Network of Biblical Storytellers). I was so inspired by Tom that I began to learn the whole Gospel of Mark.
As opportunities increased for me to perform and the word spread, I began to grow my repertoire. In 1992 I left full time parish work to devote myself to this itinerant ministry of story. My ministry is my art, and my art is my ministry.
So for five years now I have performed and led workshops, seminars and retreats in biblical story. I have worked with Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, United Methodists, Lutherans, Disciples of Christ, Mennonites---all denominations (and some non-denominational churches) that value the sacred stories of the Christian tradition.
I have performed and taught from Seattle to Tampa, from Toronto to San Francico and even in Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Israel! I undertake this travel because I have a strong sense of vocation to help pastors, educators, church leaders and all believers everywhere experience the power of the biblical stories told as though life depended on them. Can you imagine better work than this?
YOU SAID THAT YOU USED TO CALL YOUR PERFORMANCE "DRAMA," BUT NOW YOU CALL IT "STORYTELLING." WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
Well, to shrink what could be a lecture series into two words: eye contact. The aesthetics of theater require that the audience and actors make believe that what is happening in the drama "really is" happening (in some wink-of- the-eye way).
The task of an actor in a theater performance is to sustain that illusion. Actors do not look at their audiences in the eye because to make eye contact would break that illusion.
Storytellers, on the other hand, are always massaging their audience with their eyes---at least as they are narrating. This intimacy, and its implicit invitation to enter the story is what sets storytelling apart from drama---though obviously a lot of acting is employe d in the process.
YOU SAY YOU WORK MOSTLY WITH CLERGY, TEACHERS AND CHURCH LEADERS. I TAKE IT, THEN, THAT STORYTELLING IS NOT JUST FOR CHILDREN?
Heavens, no! Not even PRIMARILY for children! I think it a measure of the dis-ease of our culture that people automatically associate the word "storytelling" with children. We have not been very intentional about creating a society in which story is valued, but the fact is that we live in stories.
Story, after all, is how we learn most of what we know.
Frequently on airplanes fellow passengers will ask me, "What do you do?" When I reply that I am a biblical storyteller, they are inevitably surprised to learn that only a fraction of my work is with children. When I tell my curious seatmates that many of the biblical stories in my repertoire are too intense for children, many of them "R-rated" at the very least, confused throat- clearing often ensues.
They often express genuine surprise that anyone could make a living at such "work" as this. I must confess, that I am daily struck by that same realization!
YOU MENTIONED A REPERTOIRE. WHAT BIBLICAL STORIES DO YOU TELL?
My bag of stories continues to grow and now consists of over 10 hours of biblical stories---some whole books (Mark, John, Galatians, Revelation, Jonah, half of Genesis), some thematic programs (such as the Christmas narratives, the four resurrection stories) and some individual stories, parables and psalms.
HOW DO YOU DEFINE "BIBLICAL STORYTELLING?"
Well, it means many things to many people. In the general sense it includes everything from first person monologues to creative expansions of narrative themes found in the Bible to puppetry to dance. But all these various expressions of biblical storytelling spring from that core activity which I define as biblical storytelling in the specific sense. And here is my definition: Biblical storytelling is the lively interpretation, expression and animation of a narrative text of the Old or New Testament that has been first deeply internalized and then is "remembranced" (a word I borrow to mean "recalled in all its vitality as a living reality in the present moment"), breathed, voiced and embodied, by a teller/performer as a sacred event in community with an audience/congregation. That's a definition I've lived with for a few years, and it seems to bear the test of time.
YOU TELL THE STORIES WITHOUT ADDING ANYTHING OR CHANGING THEM. SOME PEOPLE THINK THAT LIMITS THE CREATIVE PROCESS.
I am happy to have people use the gifts God has given them to tell the story in any way that is appropriate for them and for their audiences. But I would challenge any who denigrate the practice of performing the story as it is found in the text (as it has been traditioned to us): Must we add our own extra scenes to a good play in order to interpret it creatively? To perform a Bach partita, must we change it, add notes, "improve" on Johann Sebastian's work?
These stories have survived for centuries, for millennia. Maybe we should ask ourselves why. I know that some people think of telling the scripture word- for-word as "rote recitation," but, believe me, that's not what I do! Remember that the stories of the scriptures were, for the most part, first experienced as stories---full of sound and fury, red meat and bubbly---not as dead ink on silent paper.
We DO have many translations, of course. And I think it important to choose one that is responsible to the text at the same time that it "sounds" right. Some translations are better for silent reading than aural performance. And don't get me wrong, I don't think that every performance needs to be slavishly word-for-word. Biblical storytelling takes place within what I call the "orbit" of the text.
We know that oral cultures did not have the same obsession with verbatim transmission as literate culture has. (That's why there are four different sets of "words of institution.") But we DO have a text, a text that we value and revere. So when I engage in that art form that I have called biblical storytelling in the specific sense, I do have an obligation to be responsible to its music, to stay within the orbit of the text.
SO PEOPLE RESPOND TO HEARING THE TEXT MORE OR LESS JUST AS IT IS?
You bet! It blows them away! They can't believe it! People often say to me something like, "I've been going to church all my life, and I never heard the gospel before now!" Sometimes people actually say, "I can't believe that's in there; I'm going to go home and look it up!" The reaction reminds me of the response that Jesus encounters over and over again in Mark's story, "We've never heard anything like this!"
When people tell me that I make it come alive, I respond, "It already IS alive; I just try not to KILL it!" The problem is that since the Enlightenment the church has become adept at storycide: the killing of the story. We have actually institutionalized as normative an expressionless performance (reading) of scripture that seeks to expunge every bit of emotion and non- verbal communication. In short, we have ordained that it shall be performed as "spoken print."
My goal is to play the stories like a Stradivarius in order to provide an alternative experience to that typically associated with the hearing of the Word, an experience of that "aliveness" that motivated the downloading of the stories to paper in the first place! To hear the stories as they were originally heard is an experience of incarnation! The teaching component of my ministry has as its goal nothing short of the transformation of the way the stories are performed for worship, education, spiritual growth and social action.
SO YOU SEE A NEED FOR THIS IN TODAY'S CHURCH? IN TODAY'S WORLD?
We have a church that is story-starved, fed a meager diet of lectionary scraps once a week if that often. If we do not know our story, we do not know who we are. People want to know the story, but they are put off by reading the Bible.
I ask, "How did people come to faith before literacy was common?" I answer, "Through the telling/hearing of the story." This seems like a no-brainer to me. We have a tremendous opportunity for evangelism here---beginning with the evangelization of those who already profess faith in Jesus Christ, but who only know the Cliff Notes version of the story---if they know any of it at all. We can find ways to introduce these stories to a culture that is no longer steeped in the narratives and metaphors of scripture.
This past summer I performed on a public beach as part of an experimental program of several Presbyterian Churches in the South Fork of Long Island. A crowd of the curious gathered around and listened to the stories of Noah and Jonah and Jesus calming the sea, and they licked their slurpies and laughed and called the kids over and HAD A GREAT TIME! In this post-literate age our task should begin not with the problem of biblical literacy but with the people's story poverty. If our people start to become rich in the stories, I believe that that will lead naturally to biblical literacy!
AS A PROFESSIONAL STORYTELLER MYSELF, I KNOW THAT "BIBLICAL STORYTELLING" IS A FAIRLY LIMITED POND. HAVE YOU THOUGHT OF EXPANDING YOUR WORK TO TELL'SECULAR' STORIES, TO SWIM IN A BIGGER LAKE?
I have, indeed, seriously considered it, and others have urged me in that direction. For the present, my sense of call is just to keep telling the biblical stories. And I have about 95% of the Bible yet to learn! Perhaps the day will come when this ministry evolves into some other shape---maybe in that great and glorious day when storytelling in worship is universally assumed. I really do enjoy what I am doing, and I think that I am continuing to improve at my craft and joyous art. I am grateful for the storytelling gifts God has given me and for the opportunities people make for me to exercise those gifts.
Let me tell you, I led a storytelling retreat some months ago in Delaware. Few of the couple dozen participants had known each other before the retreat. By the end of their day together, a day they spent in serious reflection and sharing of their own lifestories and in becoming intimate with a biblical story that spoke to their lifestories, they were weeping and hugging and exchanging phone numbers. THAT'S the power of story in general and biblical story in particular. That's why I do what I do!
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Tracy Radosevic is a professional Christian educator turned professional storyteller. She holds a Masters in Religious Education from Duke Divinity School and a Masters in Storytelling from East Tennessee State University. She resides in Baltimore but travels all over the United States performing and leading storytelling workshops. You may reach her by email at tracy@tracyrad.com.
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