“I have had some problems with my breathing,” Hugh Whelchel shared in his Praxis Circle interview, recorded with Doug Monroe in 2021. He had told me something similar the last time I saw him in the fall of 2019. He was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, in March 2020, eventually passing away from the condition on Good Friday last year.
I remember finding out about his diagnosis. It was unbelievable in the very sense that I could not believe it. Hugh was always larger than life. Not only was he tall, but his personality and presence filled up any room he walked into. He was always smiling, laughing, and telling stories. The reality that he was in his final chapter was hard news for all of us who knew him.
As I recently rewatched his Praxis Circle interview, what stood out to me the most was his love of stories. He readily told stories from his own life, like the time he left a successful corporate career to go to seminary mid-life. And he was as fluent in stories from literature and cultures as he was in stories from the Bible. These weren’t just anecdotes; they embodied his worldview and shared important values about work, purpose, and calling.
The Biblical Meta-Narrative
More than anyone, Hugh taught me about the big-picture Biblical meta-narrative that arcs from Genesis to Revelation. This is the story that begins with creation, moves through the tragedy of the fall, climaxes in redemption, and concludes in the promise of ultimate restoration.
For Hugh, this wasn’t just theology. It was a framework for understanding the world. When asked what the Christian worldview is in a nutshell, he answered:
When I think about that, I think about a story—it’s actually a scene from a story—at the end of The Lord of the Rings. It’s actually a scene they cut from the movie, so it wasn’t in the movie. Frodo and Sam have been rescued by the giant eagles and brought back to the home of elves to be taken care of. And Sam wakes up for the first time, and Gandalf is at the foot of his bed. He looks, “It’s Gandalf!” He says, “I thought you were dead!” Then he looks down and says, “Oh, I thought I was dead!” Then he looks at him and asks him a very interesting question. He says, “Is everything bad going to come untrue?” Is everything bad going to come untrue? And Gandalf nods his head and says, “Yes.”
And you know, that’s at the very core of our Christian worldview. This idea of creation-fall-redemption-restoration. That God is putting everything back the way it’s supposed to be, that there’s this process taking place, that we’re to be a part of that process.
From the Cultural Mandate to the Parable of the Talents, Hugh emphasized how these stories were blueprints for human flourishing. They guide how we think about work, economics, justice, and meaning. He often pointed out that the Protestant Reformation reawakened a cultural understanding that every kind of work—whether you’re a pastor or a plumber—can be sacred.
Contextualization
Perhaps you know someone who is great at telling stories like Hugh. It’s a gift. Certainly, these people have a talent, but it’s a gift to all of us who know them because the stories are important.
Stories matter because they are a form of contextualization, the process of understanding and interpreting information within its surrounding context. Some concepts—like worldviews—are so big that they are hard to understand on their own. But if you explain what worldviews are and why they matter by telling stories from history or from your own experiences, it can help people make sense of the concept.
Here is an example, a story if you will. I serve as an adjunct instructor at Cumberland University, teaching business and marketing courses. Every semester, when I teach marketing, there are a lot of big, challenging concepts I have to communicate to students. The easiest way to teach them about concepts such as Robert Cialdini’s principles of persuasion is to give them examples of marketing campaigns that have utilized these principles.
The grocery store that’s offering free samples of cheese and crackers? That’s reciprocity. The toothpaste brand that says nine out of ten dentists recommend their toothpaste? That’s authority. Those five-star reviews on Amazon? That’s social proof.
Giving them examples from the real world that they have seen or experienced allows the students to wrap a story around the concept. They remember the last time that they ordered a product based on the positive reviews. They think about the time they got a free donut because of a buy-one-get-one promotion. They can start with my examples and tell their own stories, and once they have their own stories to share, they can take ownership over the idea.
Contextualization through stories works outside of the classroom. It’s one of the ways that we make sense of our lives and the lives of others. Stories not only shape our worldviews, but they are also how we share our worldviews with each other.
The God who Contextualizes
In his Praxis Circle interview, Doug Monroe asked Hugh if the Christian worldview could evolve, change, adapt, or reinvent itself. Not surprisingly, Hugh answered with a story. He shared about a woman who helped him realize that Christianity is the only religion in the world that can contextualize itself into any culture. You could go into a Christian church service anywhere in the world, and the cultural experience will be unique to that people and location, but the Gospel will be the same. Why is this?
Christianity can do this, Hugh explained, because the biblical story is ultimately one of contextualization. “The ultimate contextualization is the incarnation,” he explained. “God became man—that’s the ultimate contextualization.”
God became man—entered into the human story—and men have told his story over and over in every culture, language, and time.
The next time you watch an interview, read a book, or have a conversation with a friend, pay attention to what stories they share. Stories matter. The stories we tell, the stories we hear, and the stories we share. We can’t understand each other or our worldviews without them.
