The Importance of Campfire Stories

When I served as a counselor at Camp Roger, a camp in Rockford, Mich., we would head out each week for a night in tents. After dark we gathered around the fire and told stories. One of my most memorable nights was reading stories from the Apocrypha. The boys could not get enough of Daniel, Bel, and the Dragon.

• That is what campfire stories do — they pull a community together and remind us of who we are. The church is a sacred family, and every sacred family needs its campfire stories, the 5 to 10 pivotal moments that shaped your congregation, moments of change, crisis, joy, sorrow, and those surprising times when God showed up in a way you did not expect.

Campfire stories are positive stories. They speak of the best of what your sacred family of God has been able to accomplish, along with the values, systems, and God-given vision that contributed to this ministry moment.

• Where do you start? Some practical ideas are below!

How to tell your church’s campfire stories

1. Name the stories before you lose them.

• Ask your leaders, “What are the 5 to 10 events that shaped us?” Do not start with opinions. Start with memories.

2. Look for moments that reveal your true values.

• Pay attention to what the stories celebrate. A faithful risk. A costly act of care. A step of repentance. A breakthrough in prayer.

3. Find your storytellers.

• Every congregation has elders around the fire, people who carry the history. Invite them to speak, and invite younger leaders to listen and record.

4. Choose the right places to tell them.

• Tell campfire stories in membership classes, new volunteer onboarding, council meetings, and once in a while from the pulpit. If you only tell them at anniversaries, you will forget them the rest of the time.

5. Tell the story behind the story.

• Do not only say what happened. Name what made it possible: a habit of prayer, a culture of hospitality, a courageous decision, a shared sense of call. That is how a story shapes character.

6. Start a simple “campfire archive.”

• One page per story is enough. Title it, date it, list the key people, write 10 lines about what happened, and end with: “What this taught us about God and about us.”

If you lead a church, you know how easy it is to lose your history in the glow of a hundred modern distractions. Campfire stories keep you grounded. They help a congregation remember who they are, and whose they are.