The role of public, communal and personal narratives in evangelism.

As a Catholic Christian I find that in my childhood the Public and communal narratives were the ones that were emphasised in our church community. There was an emphasis on the Church had the bragging rights (rites) to all the narratives, eg. the saints stories,how we were to interpret scripture stories and to understand the Church historical journey story. The magisterium interpreted what way the narratives were meant to be taken. The personal narratives were below the radar of public offering. In a way, the private narratives were largely ignored. The over-emphasis of the public and communal narratives led to a highly ritualistic communal expression of faith that emphasised follow the rubrics rather than personal commitment to following Jesus. The deminished personal narratives meant that people were less likely to be aware of their personal call to follow Jesus. Effective and long lasting evangelism needs a commitment to holding all 3 narratives as equally important. Depending on the time, there is the need to use one form of narrative more than the others. This is only done to serve what is best needed for evangelism to succeed at that moment. On another occasion, a different narrative may be better.