It started with a question
In 2006, Jeremy Pryor and his family were living in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. With a few other families, they launched a church community of people who truly cared for one another. They were having meals together, starting businesses together, and worshipping together. By most measures, it was working.
But then they met a man who had spent thirty years as a missionary in China. Over lunch, Jeremy told him what they were building. The man listened, and then he asked a seemingly simple question:
Jeremy started to answer, but the more he talked, the more he realized he didn't actually have an answer. They cared for each other. They were doing a lot of Biblical activity in their community, but they had no repeatable way to pass on the faith. There was nothing they could put in someone's hands and say, "Here. This is where it starts."
The question stuck with him.
But then they met a man who had spent thirty years as a missionary in China. Over lunch, Jeremy told him what they were building. The man listened, and then he asked a seemingly simple question:
"But how are you making disciples?"
Jeremy started to answer, but the more he talked, the more he realized he didn't actually have an answer. They cared for each other. They were doing a lot of Biblical activity in their community, but they had no repeatable way to pass on the faith. There was nothing they could put in someone's hands and say, "Here. This is where it starts."
The question stuck with him.
Going Back to the Foundation
Jeremy took a month. He sat in a booth at a Panera and asked the Lord a hard question of his own:
"What is actually at the foundation of my faith, and how do I give it away to someone else?"
The answer he kept circling back to was something he had learned years earlier in Bible College, from Professor Dr. Ray Lubeck. The Bible isn't a rulebook or a stack of disconnected lessons. It's a story. One story, from the first page to the last, and we are all living inside it. Jeremy had carried that truth for years. He had been shaped by it. He had just never tried to hand it to anyone else.
So he tried.
"What is actually at the foundation of my faith, and how do I give it away to someone else?"
The answer he kept circling back to was something he had learned years earlier in Bible College, from Professor Dr. Ray Lubeck. The Bible isn't a rulebook or a stack of disconnected lessons. It's a story. One story, from the first page to the last, and we are all living inside it. Jeremy had carried that truth for years. He had been shaped by it. He had just never tried to hand it to anyone else.
So he tried.
The First Living Rooms
The first group met in a friend's living room in Newport, Kentucky. Jeremy had invited one guy. That guy asked if he could bring a few more, and showed up with seven or eight. They opened the Scriptures and worked through the story together, not as a lecture but as a conversation, using an ancient Jewish way of reading the text called midrash. They sat with a passage, asked questions, and paid attention to what rose to the surface. Nobody knows exactly what's going to happen, and that is part of the point.
People started having the kind of moments you don't forget.
Word got around. Friends of friends asked to go through it. Jeremy and his family kept hosting, kept training others to lead, and kept watching people make life-changing decisions as the Story took root in them.
Somewhere in those early rounds it picked up a name: the Story Formed Life, or SFL.
People started having the kind of moments you don't forget.
Word got around. Friends of friends asked to go through it. Jeremy and his family kept hosting, kept training others to lead, and kept watching people make life-changing decisions as the Story took root in them.
Somewhere in those early rounds it picked up a name: the Story Formed Life, or SFL.
On The Road
After a few years of leading SFL groups, Jeremy was asked to take the staff of a large local church through SFL. That first group of about ten led to three more, and before long the church wanted to run its college and career ministry through it too. By then, enough people had been through SFL and trained to lead that they could run ten to fifteen groups at once. It was no longer something Jeremy did. It had become something a whole community could carry.
SFL continued to grow in Cincinnati among various groups and churches. In 2011, Jeremy's dad began carrying SFL even farther, teaching pastors in Cambodia, Thailand, and Rwanda. His work with the Cambodian pastors is still going today.
SFL continued to grow in Cincinnati among various groups and churches. In 2011, Jeremy's dad began carrying SFL even farther, teaching pastors in Cambodia, Thailand, and Rwanda. His work with the Cambodian pastors is still going today.
Where We Are Now
The Story was never meant to belong to one family or one city. So they chose to release it. A training school was created for people who wanted to learn to facilitate, because leading an SFL takes a particular skill. You are guiding people toward discovery, not handing them answers.
Over time, SFL became its own organization, now led by Justin Wolfenberg, and continues to expand into more states and countries each year.
You can experience the Story over eleven weeks, sitting with one session at a time and letting it sink in, or in an intensive weekend retreat for people who can't step away for a full season.
Over time, SFL became its own organization, now led by Justin Wolfenberg, and continues to expand into more states and countries each year.
You can experience the Story over eleven weeks, sitting with one session at a time and letting it sink in, or in an intensive weekend retreat for people who can't step away for a full season.
when you go through SFL...
Whether it be new believers or people who have followed Jesus their whole lives, when people go throug SFL, they stop reading the Bible as a pile of disconnected lessons and start to see it as one story that actually holds together, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And then they find their own place inside it. The shift is usually less about learning something new and more about something moving from the head to the heart. From "I know that" to "I really believe that."
That shift changes things. Marriages come into alignment. Families discover a shared foundation they can build on together. People who felt stuck or dried out find themselves awake again. And a lot of them walk away wanting to give it to someone else, the same way it was given to them.
That shift changes things. Marriages come into alignment. Families discover a shared foundation they can build on together. People who felt stuck or dried out find themselves awake again. And a lot of them walk away wanting to give it to someone else, the same way it was given to them.
You're Next
SFL isn't meant to be the whole of your spiritual life, and it won't replace your church. It's a foundation. It gives you, and the people you love, one shared Story to stand on, so that everything else you build has something solid underneath it.
That's what was missing in that living room back in 2006. It's what one honest question uncovered. And it's still what we get to put in people's hands today.
That's what was missing in that living room back in 2006. It's what one honest question uncovered. And it's still what we get to put in people's hands today.
