2014 marks the 10th anniversary of The Story Workshop at The Allender Center, a profound event that invites participants deeply into the themes of their lives, offering encouragement as they seek to understand, write, tell, and live their stories in deeper and more transformative ways.
“We consider The Story Workshop to be The Allender Center’s quintessential event,” said Jeanette White, program director for The Allender Center. “It encompasses all of the core messages and experiences that we hold dear: that there is power in your story—in fact, you are a story—and it is worth telling, and that the telling is best done in the company of others who have great skills and deep hearts to help you restore and integrate all the truth, beauty, brokenness, and goodness that makes up your life.”
About the purpose of the Workshop from its inception, Jeanette said, “The Story Workshop started out as a small group of people in Seattle with a great idea: to create an event that would allow individuals to engage some of the deepest places of their hearts through powerful teaching coupled with active engagement and exploration of one another’s stories.”
Lisa Fann, a leader at the workshop throughout its run and co-creator of the workshop curriculum, described the impact The Story Workshop has on participant’s lives: “The Story Workshop is so powerful because it combines many forms of learning and opportunities to grow—through teaching, the story of tragedy that participants write, interactions in small groups, the one-on-one meeting with group leaders, written feedback on the story, and through connecting with the other participants—courageous people who are willing to face pain for the sake of living more fully. The Story Workshop is a banquet of stories of suffering and hope and redemption … Participants often leave with a freedom that comes from seeing themselves as the Beloved.”
“Again and again,” Dan Allender, author of To Be Told and creator of the Story Workshop, reported, “we hear participants tell us that The Story Workshop invites people to come home to stories that brought them significant pain, but on a richer entry has actually brought them home to the Father whose heart is full of joy and delight in their return either from the back fields or far away lands.”
The 10th anniversary of the Story Workshop brings two opportunities to participate in this life-changing invitation to enter your story: Irvine, CA, (June 11-14, 2014) and Seattle, WA, (August 21-24, 2014).
Learn more about the Story Workshop in Irvine, CA, and register »
Learn more about the Story Workshop in Seattle, WA, and register »
In honor of the 10th anniversary of The Story Workshop, we’ll be featuring stories of participants and facilitators over the next few months, including reflections from the creator of The Story Workshop, Dr. Dan B. Allender. Look for these features at The Seattle School and The Allender Center websites in the weeks and months to come!