Tell Me a Story: Using Narratives to Illustrate Research Findings

Daniels, Gene and E J Martin. “Tell Me a Story: Using Narratives to Illustrate Research Findings.” Proceedings of the Sixth Lausanne Researchers International Network Conference.Sao Paolo, Brazil, 2010. Many become involved in mission research because of a desire to contribute to the growth of God’s kingdom. So they are frustrated and disheartened when the findings from a demanding missiological research project sit unused. With this problem in mind, our research team decided to focus on finding ways to ensure that our research findings can be easily utilized by cross-cultural workers serving among Muslims.  One of those research products is a series of narrative-based learning tools. In this paper, we explore the rationale for using narratives to illustrate mission research findings and the process by which we turn data and abstractions into easy reading narratives and associated tools. The ultimate goal of presenting data in this way is help field practitioners grow and develop by integrating our research findings into their ministries through missiological reflection.

Tell Me a Story (Daniels and Martin).pdf