The Story That Holds Us: What Andrew Root Taught Me About Faith and Narrative

TL;DR: Theologian Andrew Root reminds us that people don’t just need beliefs—they need a story to live by. His work helped me rediscover how God’s story gives identity, imagination, and meaning beyond both fundamentalism and progressivism.

Great photos are like great stories… they leave something to the imagination.

Sometimes the smallest details tell the biggest truths. It’s almost a throwaway line on his bio: “Andy spends far too much time watching TV and movies.”

That line comes from the book jacket of Andrew Root’s Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry (2012), part four of his A Theological Journey Through Youth Ministry series. A friend in ministry sent me this book—along with another from the series—knowing my fondness for Root’s work. If I may say so, I’m something of an Andrew Root scholar, if such a thing can exist.

As good as the book was, what stuck with me most wasn’t just the theology but the way Root tells stories. In this book, he uses the story of a youth worker named “Nadia” to illustrate his broader themes. Likewise, in Evangelism in the Age of Despair, he includes the fictional story of a woman named “Mary” who walks alongside others in their pain and loss—embodying the very theological insights Root articulates in prose.

And that’s what I find so brilliant about Andrew Root. He doesn’t just explain ideas; he tells you why they matter. He believes deeply in the power of story.

In Faith Formation in a Secular Age, Root writes,

“We share in hypostasis through story itself. This is why hearing another’s story is an incredible act of ministry; in hearing another’s story we are given the revelation of his person. And when personhood is shared through ministry, Jesus Christ is concretely and really present” (208).

In The Church After Innovation, he warns,

“Innovation runs the danger of curving the church in on itself, making the church the star of its own story” (222).

The power of story is something Root deeply understands, whether it be the misdirection that can come from an ill-informed story or the lack of direction altogether that comes from having no sense of story. As Root puts it in The End of Youth Ministry: “There is no way to have a firm identity without a sense of a story” (162). Another author, J. Michael Jordan, captures this truth well: “When we don’t have a guiding story outside our own experience—a story bigger than us that we inhabit—we are left with sincerity alone” (Worship in an Age of Anxiety, 92).

Sincerity is something I can certainly understand. Root has, in many ways, given me a new story—a new way to understand Christian faith that transcends the rigid fundamentalism of my youth while offering something more tangible and real than the belief-lite political activism masquerading as religion in so many progressive spaces. In both spaces, sincerity felt like everything, though it manifested differently. Rather than being a story—it felt scripted.

In my youth, much of conservative Christian media and film fell flat because it tried too hard to deliver a message. Like many TV shows and movies today, they were too preachy, too prescriptive. A good story doesn’t function like a tutorial—it doesn’t tell you exactly what to do. Instead, it paints a picture of what could be and leaves space for the reader or viewer to imagine how they might find themselves within it.

But the best stories—the ones with real magnetism and lasting impact—are those in which the reader or viewer doesn’t have to do anything except recognize they’re already in it. The American story was one of the most powerful of these narratives in recent history. Yet its flaw was clear: it left too many people out and lacked deep rootedness in truth and history. It’s easy to look back and see how many people of color and those on the margins were excluded, left behind, or frankly left for dead.

That’s where God’s story offers something radically different. It’s a story that gathers rather than excludes, that makes space for the forgotten, that roots us not in national myth but divine grace. And being part of that story calls me to trust God’s action rather than my own—perhaps the central theme across the ten books of Root I’ve now read. When I trust that I’m a part of God’s bigger story, I’m less focused on making my own way and more intent on finding my part and trusting God to show me the path.

The last two times I’ve had Root on my Future Christian Podcast, I started by asking what he’s been watching. Not because I need TV recommendations (I’d rather read a book), but because it gives me a glimpse into what stories he thinks matter.

Root understands something essential: people long for a story to believe in—something bigger than themselves. Not a list of dogmas, not a checklist of moral imperatives—but a story. And in an age when so many myths and meta-narratives are being deconstructed (some for good reason), we’re desperate for a new story to anchor our lives to.

As Root writes in The Congregation in a Secular Age,

“The good life demands narrative. You need a story about what makes life good to have an identity… We need a story” (185).

James K.A. Smith echoes this in On the Road with Saint Augustine:

“To be without a story is to live without any sort of script that might help us know who we are and what we are about” (163).
“Identity is our name being found by a story someone else told” (160).

The good news of the Gospel is this, that we are a part of God’s story. As Root again reminds us:

“God embraces us in love because God has made space for our own events in God’s own life, making our events profoundly, beautifully, and amazingly part of God’s own story” (The End of Youth Ministry, 200).

Root isn’t merely telling his story; he’s pointing us toward God’s story. And that’s a lesson I wish more preachers would rediscover. Too many sermons today offer a list of things to do—a “to-do list for Jesus”—but without a narrative frame, they fall flat. They lack imagination. They don’t help us see how our lives fit within God’s ongoing redemptive story.

Story invites us to dream. It engages not just our reason but our imagination—the same way Jesus’ parables did.

My middle-school daughter has started thinking about what she wants to do with her life. Some of her ideas—like becoming a “cat lady”—I take less seriously. But when she says she wants to be a writer, my heart leaps. “We need good writers,” I tell her. “We need good storytellers.”

We often talk about what makes a good story, and I lament how many modern shows and movies celebrate lazy or self-absorbed characters with no vision or calling. Compelling stories—like the ones Jesus told—invite us into a larger vision of what could be.

So let’s tell better stories.

Let’s invite people—not into our own stories—but into the greatest story of all: God’s story.