The Narrative Nature

A recent study of Lyotard and the effect of his declaration of postmodernism as, "Incredulity toward metanarratives" has led to some interesting thoughts on theology. Metanarratives are taken as those underlying narratives that are considered true in all places at all times, namely reason. Reason has dominated theology for the past several hundred years. To this point, the worship of reason has developed some critical (fatally in my mind) issues in our theology. First, one of the goals of Christians is to prove their faith using "reason" as its ally. This involves taking the Bible away from its tradition roots into a purely historical document. Thus, stripping Christianity of its faith. Second, it has moved preachers to move from lectionary preaching (following through the Bible in whole parts) to proof text preaching (sermons with points that are proven by random verses throughout the bible). Proof-text preaching is very 17th century philosopher and leads to strong misunderstandings. Calvinists are the kings of proof-texting. The error in proof-texting is that you can make the Bible say anything.
However, if we follow Lyotard in throwing out the metanarrative of reason, we are left with narratives. The Bible is a narrative. It is a story of the work of God in the world and salvation of his creation. Thus, this would lead us back to lectionary preaching, in that, our preaching would reflect the narrative nature of the Bible. We would no longer preach the few verses that reasonably support our own agendas, rather we would guide God's people through the narrative of the Gospel.
Yet, the idea of being a storytelling church is bigger than simply preaching through the Bible. Being a storytelling church requires the church to be part of the narrative of the Bible. This means that tradition comes alongside the scripture in our churches. Traditions in story telling include the Eucharist (telling of Jesus' sacrifice) and worship (God's people praising Him for his work in the world) and baptism (the story of the Resurrection and its redemption of man).
Let us throw off the modernist belief in reason as the narrative above all narrative and join the story of God.