The Church is a Christ-shaped people ... It is a community in which people learn how to embody the story of Jesus Christ. The Church can only tell the story of Christ if it has first read Christ's story, consumed it in such a way that it nourishes and shapes the Church as consumer, reader and teller of the story ... Entering the story, becoming a character within its storied world, is then a matter of becoming part of the body that embodies the story.
Learning how to consume the scriptural story so that it nourishes and strengthens the body - how to read it in order to tell it aright - is a matter of disciplined practice, of ecclesial (narrative) ethics ... The aim is to shape characters fitted for life in the story og Christ; characters who, shaped in and after the body of Christ, are able to follow him into his Kingdom.
Gerald Loughlin, Telling God's Story: Bible, Church and narrative theology, 1996, 86-87)
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