The 5-Minute Challenge
Choose one or two of seven SYNC mini-stories
as your preferred version(s)
The story of God’s long campaign to connect, heal, and bless the world is complicated and covers thousands of years, including some in the future. If we zoom out far enough, we realize that seven milestone events (or game-changers) make the plot go the way it does.
Each of the SYNC mini-stories below focuses on a different milestone event as the main point of the plot. Your 5-Minute Challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to find one or two of the mini-stories that most interest you and click either link at the end for a deeper dive.
You win the challenge if you click in less that five minutes. (No links are click-bait. All keep you on this site, and nothing is for sale here.) Your prize is that you successfully guide yourself to a page that is talking about things that matter to you, and you bypass all distractions.
Hint: some users are able to speed up the process by reading only the first sentence of each mini-story. Which first sentence sounds best to you?
OR Jump down to the 10-minute version of the Challenge
1. Life: The story of the world is a story about life and death. God invented life and gave it to the world, but humans foolishly went down the path to death. God set a plan in motion to give life back to the world through the descendants of Abraham, especially Jesus. He brought life and health to the world, and he defeated death. He gave his life-power to his followers, and now they are carrying on his work until he comes back to wipe out death forever.
2. Roots: The story of the world is a story about group identity and roots. God’s strategy to bless the world is to identify himself with one group of people and to bless all the other groups through his group. He created his group through one person who trusted him completely—Abraham. He redefined his group through one person—Jesus. Now people from any ethnic group may be grafted into his group and share in his campaign to bless everyone.
3. Freedom: The story of the world is a story about freedom. God created humans to be free, but they abused their freedom and lost it. He is giving it back to them. He started by freeing his people from slavery in Egypt and giving them a homeland where they could be free. They lost that freedom too. Jesus came to bring a new era of freedom to the world. He gave up his own freedom and was unjustly executed. Then God the Father set him free from death. Now his followers call others to be part of the Freedom Era.
4. Power: The story of the world is a story about a power struggle. God gave the first humans power over all creation, but they lost that power to Satan. God gradually exposed Satan’s weak spots through Moses and the prophets, and then Jesus announced the end of Satan’s power. He broke it once and for all through his death and resurrection. Then he took power on the throne of heaven, and he sent his power down into his followers. Now his followers keep defeating the enemy until he returns to bring the final victory.
Expanded to 800 words as "The Mother of All Power Struggles."
5. Mercy: The story of the world is a story about receiving and giving mercy. Humans have often given God plenty of reasons to destroy us all, but he has taken the high road, the mercy road. He revealed his justice and mercy to his people, Israel. Jesus took mercy to a whole new level, laying down his life to bring mercy to us, turning his own unjust execution into a sacrifice to pay for our sins. Now Jesus has sent us out as agents of his mercy, calling the world to take advantage of God’s grace period before the final judgment falls.
6. Worth: The story of the world is a story about living out our true worth as human beings. Making honorable, loyal choices, living like humans not animals, is really all God asks of us, but the first human couple acted sub-human, and we still do. Loyalty was the first of the Ten Commandments given to Moses. All the prophets hammered the same requirement. Jesus showed us what it meant, trusting God even when he was mocked and executed for doing exactly what God had sent him to do. Jesus’s followers still suffer for representing his power and his mercy, but in the end, he will validate their worth.
7. Vision: The story of the world is a story about a vision of the future. The vision is simply that the world will finally be what it was created to be in the first place. How will it get there? Neither by technological advance nor by God’s people consolidating their power and imposing it. Rather the vision will come true in the same way that Abraham and Jesus saw it happen—unexpectedly and seemingly too late. Knowing that, we stay loyal through the dark times, trusting his power and mercy.
The 10-Minute Challenge
Instead of choosing the mini-story that interests you most yourself, try to choose the one you think will be of most interest to people of a different culture you interact with. Try this as a means of understanding them better:
1. Imagine yourself telling one of the seven SYNC mini-stories to a particular friend or a group. Perhaps you want to interest them in the biblical story. Perhaps they are already interested but don't want a long or pushy explanation.
2. Ask yourself: "Which one of these seven mini-stories would connect best with the person or group I am thinking of?
3. Reflect on your choice. Why did you choose the mini-story you did?
If those three steps take more than 10 minutes, you are overthinking it. This is supposed to be a quick first try. To dive deeper, continue with some or all of the next three steps.
4. Use the link at the end of the mini-story you chose, then read the 800-word version at the link destination. See if that longer version confirms your choice as a good one or makes you want to go back and check for a better mini-story.
5. Ask a friend who knows the person or group you had in mind to take the challenge. See whether they choose the same mini-story you did and if they give the same reasons you had. Learn as much as you can from your friend's view.
6. Through a creative writing exercise, develop your own version of the 800-word story, crafting it to connect well with the group you have in mind. Do this with a friend or a team if possible. Guide for the writing exercise