Season 7 Episode 1: Counseling is Story Work

Alex (00:11.502)

We're in our series, Story Matters, and we're talking about the grand narrative, and we have a special guest today that's a treat for us. So Adam Kopek is joining us. He is my pastor, senior pastor at Young Meadows, and he is a member of our board, but also he's been a good friend to both Brenda and to me and to our families. And so we're excited to have you here today, Adam.

Adam Coppock (00:37.93)

Thank y'all for having me. It's been a joy to know y'all over the years. It's been a joy to be a part of y'all's board and just to see how God continues to use known. And so it's fun for me to do this.

Alex (00:51.918)

We've had a lot of time together talking about the grand narrative. We use the grand narrative in leadership training and a lot of different things in our church. And I think I would have to say it probably shapes our thinking more than just about any other paradigm. It has changed the way we think about ministry. It's changed the way we think about our vision and mission of our church. Would you agree that

Like that's been one of the biggest influences that, or change in influences we've had over the last few years.

Adam Coppock (01:26.422)

Absolutely. And even, you know, we've kind of approached it a couple different ways, through ways we've taught some sort of grand narrative and then tried to preach and teach and do even a devotional through three years, a three years series, and then almost kind of narrowing in specifically how you've taught the grand narrative the last two years. Even so much that I'm redoing our communicates class and I'm

redoing the first two lessons around grand narrative and using the categories differently than I had in the past. And so, yeah, I think it gives us such a great foundation and building blocks and then common language to be able to give people kind of hooks to attach other kind of doctrines to and where to find themselves in God's story.

Alex (01:55.287)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (02:17.795)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Coppock (02:36.506)

Absolutely. I didn't know if that's me or you. So, you know, we, yeah, so we live, we live in a, uh, a meta, uh, type, uh, culture. Now you think about Facebook and its new identity as meta, and you think about, um, almost communicating this idea of, um, relocating yourself in some sort of bigger place.

Alex (02:56.318)

Mm.

Adam Coppock (03:05.434)

and sort of a bigger story even. And so that's almost the way technology has gone to try to help people connect with other people through different social medias and everything. But it's this whole idea of meta. Well, meta is not new. Meta has been through ancient stories all throughout our history books and all throughout cultures, is looking at this idea of a bigger story.

than our particular individual story that we live each day. So Adam doesn't just exist in Adam's world. Adam exists as a part of some sort of bigger story. And so we approach the Scriptures as recognizing that there's not just competing metanarratives or competing bigger stories that actually we recognize that we have been created by one true God who actually has this story

that he unfolds in his scriptures from Genesis to Revelation of how he has created this world and what's wrong with the world and how he's actually fixing this world. And so the grand narrative is kind of a description of how that one cohesive story of God's work in his world fits together and then how it is that our individual, we don't use this term often, but our micro stories would fit that grand narrative.

Alex (04:31.136)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (05:23.796)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Coppock (05:25.45)

Yeah, it ultimately shapes how we approach the Bible. In the same way that in school, you're gonna approach your math textbook differently than your English anthology collection of stories. You're gonna approach how to digest the information and apply it differently. And so the Bible, in God's creativity, he so condescends to us to give his creation

an understandable way to know him, to know his world, and he uses it through, like you said, all sorts of different genres, which actually makes the Bible a very exciting book. But like you said, like, it is overwhelming to think about, like, where do I start? And then when I get to certain places, like, I don't know, prophecy or revelation, and they're like, what did I just read? What do I do with that? And so, the grand narrative helps us.

Alex (06:18.956)

Hehehehe

Adam Coppock (06:23.594)

of locate ourselves in the bigger picture, even in the confusing parts of the body.

Alex (06:30.606)

And it's just so different from the way most of us grew up learning the Bible. I mean, most of us grew up with, if we grew up in church, we grew up in Sunday school. I'm dating myself when I say this, but with the flannel board, stories with characters, and we learned the Bible as a collection of stories. Often those stories even felt disjointed like historically, but

But what we knew of the Bible was Bible characters and their stories and a lot for me in particular, a lot of moral lessons. So to now be able to take these stories and to see them as parts of a whole comprehensive worldview as like, oh, these are a lens through which we see the whole world changes the way that I view scripture.

Alex (07:24.15)

Adam disappeared.

Alex (07:34.906)

We lost our guest.

Alex (07:41.346)

And I can't make that stupid upload stop.

Alex (07:48.525)

So weird

Alex (07:55.138)

Oh here, he texted me, he said he got kicked off.

Alex (08:03.032)

That means that's the internet at church. Get behind me, Satan.

Alex (08:14.074)

Yes. He said, maybe I'm not supposed to be on your podcast.

Alex (08:37.607)

I'm

Alex (09:12.254)

Oh, I think we can pick up, yeah. You mean if we do it on another day?

Alex (09:27.403)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (09:30.658)

Yeah, I said try to come back and use the same link to join.

Alex (09:53.782)

Yeah.

Alex (10:05.114)

He says he's trying to get in.

Alex (10:40.458)

I think we can start the next point. I think we finished that point.

Alex (10:58.211)

The funny thing to me is how the whole first two seasons, we really did not have these issues. Like we just, no, I mean even the first two seasons we did on Zoom, it's just like we just had this easy, it just sailed through, and the longer we go along, the more issues we have.

Yeah.

Alex (11:59.886)

So instead of the way we used to view the scripture as these collection of stories, we're talking about the Bible as a grand narrative of having one cohesive or one comprehensive story. So just for fun, what would y'all say the comprehensive summary of the story of the Bible is if we were gonna try to say it in a sentence or two?

Alex (12:37.702)

Hmm.

Alex (12:59.894)

So this kind of, I think is highlighting, again, another difference that a lot of us grew up hearing this scripture as the story of God saving sinners, and it certainly is that. But...

As I began to understand seeing the Bible as one story in the grand narrative, I began to understand that there was the salvation of sinners, which some people call like the gospel on the ground. And then there's this overarching story, which you're touching on Adam of the restoration of all creation, restoring all that is broken.

all the different broken relationships that we experience, including our relationship with the earth and how God is in the process of restoring all of those things.

Alex (14:42.566)

Mm-hmm. And from, okay, go ahead, Brenda.

Alex (15:18.11)

Marty Salma will be so proud of you Brenda!

Alex (16:39.942)

Yeah, I think when you're saying that, we're starting to touch on now why, like how it becomes important in a day to day, how we live out the gospel, because that point helped me understand that idea that my work.

If I'm not working at a church in full-time ministry, a full-time missionary, a full-time evangelist, my work still has value in the Kingdom of God because I am a part of that restoring of all creation. For Brenda and me, that is sitting in an office and taking what's messy in people's lives and helping to try to bring the order and the beauty of Scripture to bear on that.

But for my husband, that's going to work every day selling building materials. And so the way that he's part of the restoration of creation is one in...

selling materials that people can build houses and have places to dwell, but also just in the way that he is interacting with his employees each day as a businessman with integrity are ways that he is bringing about the restoration of creation as well as evangelizing. But that this has given me such a bigger picture of my day-to-day life and the importance of the way that a believer lives

calling of the gospel each day.

Alex (18:37.549)

Mm.

Alex (19:07.483)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I think the other thing that happens is we see God's story is just like we begin to see our part in the story, we also begin to recognize that we are not the central figure of the story. We are not the hero of the story, we say a lot, which I honestly need to be reminded of every day because I want to be the hero not only of my story but of everybody else's story who I love.

Alex (19:40.828)

remember and I always say it helps me situate myself correctly when I approach the scripture that I am really not David who's conquering Goliath and I am not Daniel and the lion's den right like the like really I am looking to the greater David I'm looking to the greater Daniel and that Jesus is the hero of the story and I not only am NOT that I don't have to be that which is very freeing.

Alex (20:41.798)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (21:38.615)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (21:46.82)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (22:39.822)

Yeah, first I'll say maybe more traditionally people have heard this as either three or four part story, creation, fall, redemption and restoration. But Brenda, you and I like to put the prologue in there because we want to acknowledge that when scripture opens with in the beginning God, we're wanting to recognize that even from the first line of scripture, there's an acknowledgement that God exists outside of our idea of time. And so there is a story.

that's happening before the story and so we call that the prologue that God exists from eternity past to eternity future and then we see creation in the opening chapters of Genesis we see the fall happen in Genesis 3 and then most of the Old Testament is going to be viewed in the era of the fall we see the kings the judges the prophets all in this time period and we live still in

of the fall but we also live in light of redemption because as the gospel opens then we see Jesus comes and we see the plan of redemption realized in the person of Jesus and completed and yet we don't live in the completed story because we look forward to the final restoration when he comes again and establishes the new heaven and new earth so that's the restoration part of

And so we live in this place between the fall and redemption. We call it the now and the not yet. That that's where we are literally situated historically and where we know all the effects and the brokenness of the fall, the sin and suffering of this world. And yet we also taste the beginnings of the way that God is redeeming this world. We get to see some of it but we don't know all

of it. We don't know the completion of it.

Alex (25:12.866)

Adam, you wanna tackle that?

Alex (27:29.985)

Mm.

Alex (28:19.502)

Yeah, so Adam's already really kind of connected that for us because when we start with who God is and then we see that we were made as image bearers, we begin to understand.

how we were made, how we were formed, and how we begin to ask the question of how were we uniquely designed to bear God's image, that we have some commonalities as human beings made in the image of God, but then we also have some unique ways that our personality, our desires reflect.

who God is as individuals. And so formation is so much a looking at the question of who am I? How am I made? How am I made up? And then we can also even think in our own personal formation of like what context were we placed in? Adam and Eve were placed in a very specific context of the Garden of Eden, but we're placed in the context of families and cultures. And so our creation sometimes we even look at what that context is we were placed in to begin to understand the

shaping influences on our lives.

Alex (30:38.871)

And as we go.

Alex (30:48.902)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (32:05.798)

Hahaha

Alex (33:10.547)

Yeah, and then because of that we are constantly looking for refuge and rescue. So when Adam and Eve fell into sin and the effects of the fall really were felt.

throughout the whole world, what we see is this constant pursuit then of what can save me, who can save me, what can save me, who can rescue me from this pain, from this suffering, from myself, and from the shame. And so that is the question that redemption answers is like, where does salvation come from, from these things?

Alex (33:54.42)

because we are in a fallen state, we are looking for saviors other than the one true savior. And so the question is answered in the person of Jesus as the true savior is the true hero of the story. But I think this era of redemption reminds us that we're always looking for substitute saviors. We are always replacing Jesus with things that will ultimately fail us because we're looking for refuge and rescue somewhere other than him. And so we have to reorient back

true story that reminds us that he is our refuge and he is our rescue.

Alex (37:38.894)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think that helps us.

just to answer that question. I hope what people are hearing is that as we talk through this story, we're answering some of the big questions of life. And this restoration chapter answers for us, like what am I living for? What's the ultimate end that I am pursuing? And so you'll hear these questions, the big questions. Who am I? Why am I here? Why do I hurt? Why am I suffering? Who's gonna rescue me from that hurt?

going to help me? Who's the big authority over all of this world? Like who's in charge here? And then in restoration we're asking you know what's my ultimate hope? Where am I headed? What keeps me going on a day-to-day basis? And so one of the reasons I love the teaching of the grand narrative is because I do think connects us in the human experience to the big questions that we are encountering every day in our own lives and as we talk to other

Thank you.