I’m the Director of a non-for-profit ministry called GoTell Communications whose mission is to help people learn and tell biblical stories by heart as a spiritual discipline for embodying Jesus’ way of peace in the world. The GoTell Board had its quarterly meeting last week. It was a fruitful meeting that included a great idea I will implement on this blog.

One GoTell board member, Mary Hallinan, is a leader of restorative justice work in Dayton and coordinates the Women’s Circle at our county jail. She provides training in Circlekeeping and has been an on-going mentor for my work in developing Circle of the Word. She gets credit for the “great idea” which I’ll now reveal.

The Circle I lead at the county jail downtown is called “Sacred Stories” instead of “Circle of the Word” so as not to be confused with the Women’s Circle. At the Board meeting, Mary suggested I anonymously post feedback from participants in Sacred Stories, with their permission, and invite them to look for their posts when they get out.

Mary reminded me that the women like to be part of something bigger than themselves, especially if it will be helpful to others. That had been my experience both with women at the jail and with men at the state prison when I was doing research for my Doctor of Ministry project.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a brilliant, win-win-win idea. Motivating and affirming for the women, inspirational and informational for readers, and a blessing for me to have on-going worthwhile material to post.

Not only that, but easy to implement. I re-purposed a survey I had already developed for Circle feedback. I offered it as an optional activity at the end of class Wednesday. I explained that its purpose was research on biblical storytelling and posting online. I told them women that their responses would add much value to a blog dedicated to restorative justice and to a Facebook page on biblical storytelling. I invited them to look for their responses on this blog and on the GoTell Communications Facebook page when they get out.

The first item on the survey asked whether or not permission was granted to share responses. All fourteen women in class agreed. One woman didn’t know how to read. I told her she was probably a great oral learner and I read her the survey so she could give her responses.

I also asked if anyone would be willing to share her storyboard online. I took photos of several storyboards from volunteers. One is included in Wednesday’s post (9/16/15). I’ll include the others in future posts, along with survey feedback from the women.

Many thanks, Mary, for a great idea. We’ll see if it works out as well as I anticipate.

You can download the PDF of the survey here or from the Activities section of this site.