At Gilead Church in Chicago, storytelling is central to worship
It's like a MOTH event—with the vulnerability of community.
When Rebecca Anderson attended a Moth storytelling event some ten years ago, she arrived three hours before it was slated to start—and still couldn’t get a seat. “The room was packed with twenty-, thirty-, fortysomethings,” recalled Anderson.
That experience gave the Disciples of Christ pastor an idea. “The evangelist part of me thought, ‘Do we not have a true story to tell in community?’” The former stand-up comic did her booming preacher impression when describing that epiphany. The insight eventually led to Anderson joining with her friend Vince Amlin, a United Church of Christ pastor, in starting a church in which telling stories is central.
Now in its third year, Gilead Church has met in several different venues. In two of them, the worship leaders, storytellers, and preachers have used the performance space of a bar, with the congregation sitting in chairs or on stools at high tables, as though attending a small concert. In the current venue, a disco ball hangs from the ceiling. During communion the celebrants step off the stage to the same level as the congregation. One night at the bar where Gilead met for more than a year, pastors offered the bread and cup to the regular bartender, who received communion at the only rail the church had.
