In 2003, two boys emerged from the woods into the general store of a small town called Vernon, in British Columbia. The boys, both teenagers, and one severely emaciated, claimed to have been raised in the wilderness (“the bush”) outside the town, with no access to civilization or the outside world.  

The town and its people took the boys in, covering housing, food, and necessities for the cold Canadian winter. In particular, a hockey mom named Tami essentially treated the boys as her own, hosting birthday parties, taking them shopping, and trying to convince them to get professional medical help. For well over a year, the “bush boys” were a focus of care, curiosity, and compassion for the small town. 

As you’ve likely guessed, the boys were not, in fact, raised in the bush. They were from the suburbs of Sacramento, where they had run away from home. The thinness of one of the boys wasn’t due to the malnutrition of living in the woods, but rather a severe eating disorder, which had led him to flee from home to avoid being placed into in-patient treatment by his rightfully concerned parents. 

I heard this story from a podcast, who’s host is from Vernon, this small town. He tells the story of seeing the boys, of how the boys’ arrival, their lie, and the revelation of the truth shaped the town and how it sees itself. The host says, “when you’re from a place where not a lot happens, what does happen matters more.”¹ He goes on to talk about how, in the decades after the reveal of the truth, the story has continued to loom large in the minds of “Vernonites” because it showed them two things about themselves: one – they were easily fooled, and two – they were the kind of place that would choose to take care of people without hesitation, proof, or doubt that they “deserved” it. This was a place that had never really tested its character, and when it was, the Vernonites walked away feeling a little embarrassed, but mainly proud, of who they were. 

I think this insight – that when you are in a community without a lot of stories, the stories matter more – is true of cities, but also of families and congregations. The stories, even if they’re long ago, even if they seem relatively small, or like they should have resolved themselves, wind up mattering more than makes sense because they become the Rosetta stone to who you, as a community, are. 

I think of a flat rockbed, and a storm washing a rock over it. The rock scratches the rock bed, not deeply, but it’s there. The next time water washed over the rockbed, the sediment settles into that little crack, and as the water pushes months of sediment through, the crack gets bigger and deeper. The little scratch, over millions of years, becomes a canyon, because the damage of that first rock, no matter how small, created a groove that shaped the path of every other scratch. 

I have seen places that are empowered and emboldened by the stories of who they have been, and I have seen places that are crippled by it, and sometimes those have been the same place. More often than not, though, I have seen places that assume those stories don’t matter, that assume that what happened with the last pastor, on the last project, didn’t leave scratches in the rock bed. I see leaders who assume the pattern that is happening is totally without precedent, unable to notice the canyon carving beneath them. 

What are the narratives that shape who we are?

What stories about what happened, and how we responded, have left a mark that we can’t stop chasing?

Are we proud of those stories? Ashamed of them?

How does that pride or shame shape us as well? 

This week, spend some time thinking about what stories have shaped you and your congregation, for better or worse. Alternatively, take a minute to examine the topography. Look for the scratches and the canyons, the patterns that you or your community can’t seem to shake, and see if you can trace them back to the first rock, tumbling along the surface. 

We can choose to write new stories, to celebrate the ones we’re proud of and change the ones we aren’t, but what we can’t do is pretend that the stories don’t matter just because they were a long time ago or the cast has changed. These stories matter, telling them matters, and celebrating, grieving, and knowing what they reveal matters. Whatever patterns we accidentally scratched into the stone, may have become the well-worn water ways of how we live and work, and they deserve our attention. If you want a conversation partner about what it might look like to carve new paths, give us a call. 

1. Chameleon: Wild Boys, Part 8: Out of the Woods ↩︎