Left unattended, stories are dangerous, prone to wander off and cause trouble. Seriously. Some years ago, when I was leading a university communications office, a project came through the back door. A campus department wanted a video for something – the fact that it was forgotten is notable. Instead of working through the process, they went straight to a friend in video production. Trying to be helpful, someone wrote a script, shot the footage, edited the piece, and delivered a finished video that neither I nor the campus ever saw.
The school spent considerable time, effort, and money to make that video, but nobody seemed to know where it aired or what impact it had. It was never shared internally, used in marketing, integrated into recruitment or fundraising, and never referenced again. The video, and the story it told, simply wandered off.
There is an old joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. In institutional storytelling, the camel can represent work created with effort and goodwill but disconnected from the institution’s core story. A stuffed camel sits in the corner of my office today as a reminder to beware of projects ending up like that.
In institutional life, we tend to produce such things. Some stories become camels – reshaped by competing priorities and voices until they no longer resemble the original vision. Others are lost camels – initiatives, messages, even programs – that drift away because they were never reined to the school’s mission.
Most theological schools do not suffer from a lack of stories. They suffer from too many stories, told by too many voices, with too little integration. Strategic plans, donor appeals, recruitment materials, academic initiatives, denominational expectations, social media posts, crisis responses – each was created for a reason, but over time, the narrative can erode.
In a communication-saturated world, the instinct is to fix this by refining storytelling methods or trying new technology or social media channels. But as insightful and influential as Marshall McLuhan’s work has been, the medium can’t be the message: The mission is the message, and we have to harness everything to that.
For institutions whose purpose is formation – of leaders, communities, and faith traditions – narrative confusion can become its own existential crisis. If the story fractures, the sense of purpose fractures with it. What follows are four questions that can help boards, executives, and development leaders consider their mission and develop a unified story.
Clarity
What is the story you tell yourself?
Every institution has an internal narrative – what it believes about itself at its core. This narrative may be flattering, and it may sound familiar. We speak of world-class faculty, leading-edge programs, vibrant community, and legacy. However true, many schools can make similar claims, so that may no longer differentiate us.
Clarity begins when we ask a harder question: What do we “just” do? Not what we aspire to do, not what we hope others will notice, but what actually flows from our identity. Some institutions “just” form pastors in a particular tradition. Others “just” train intellectually serious believers or faith leaders and workers for a world that badly needs them. That “just” shouldn’t be dismissed; it’s a powerful moment of missional clarity.
I once visited a school whose bookstore café wasn’t making much money, and a new leader considered closing it and finding something else to do with the space. But those plans changed when the leader saw that the space functioned as the informal heart of the community where students, faculty, staff, and even visitors gathered for meals and conversation. It wasn’t “just” a revenue center, it was an embodiment of mission – the story of the school played out in the din of conversation.
Clarity requires this kind of discernment. What practices, spaces, and commitments express who we really are? Which are essential, and which are merely inherited habits? Without such clarity, storytelling becomes generic, easily replaced by the next consultant’s language or the latest social media trend.
Honesty
What’s the story people tell about you?
Institutions often assume they are widely known and understood. In reality, many people – even those in related spaces – know very little about them, or worse, hold impressions shaped decades earlier.
I once worked with a university that saw itself as the central institution of its denomination’s education and spiritual formation. However, leaders had sensed some dissonance. While they continued to rely on the internal narrative, they weren’t seeing the impact they would have expected. Those outside, including denominational officials, didn’t share the rosy view of those on campus. The internal and external stories were out of sync because no one inside challenged the prevailing narrative.
External views can be uncomfortable to hear. Alumni may hold on to memories of people and things that are long gone. Clergy may associate the school with theological commitments that have shifted. Donors may value aspects of the institution that leaders consider secondary.
Honesty requires listening and asking what people actually see when they look through the window from the outside looking in. Communication cannot correct misunderstandings if the institution itself has not acknowledged them.
This is not about chasing approval. It is about understanding the terrain on which the institution’s story will be received. Without that understanding, even accurate messages can miss their mark.
Fidelity
What’s the story the institution tells through its mission?
Mission statements are easy to print and difficult to live. The true story of an institution is told through decisions – budgets, programs, hiring, partnerships, and priorities. Mission statements can change; lived narratives tell the tale.
I once observed a school whose founding purpose was clear and compelling. Over time, however, financial pressures led to new initiatives that made sense individually but collectively shifted the institution’s trajectory. When a new president arrived and sought to realign programs with the original mission, some stakeholders resisted. They had grown accustomed to the newer activities, even if those activities had little connection to the founding vision – or the institution’s success.
Fidelity asks whether our actions still reflect our calling. Adaptation happens as contexts change and institutions respond. But adaptation without reference to mission risks creating a different institution altogether.
Trust in institutions is fragile. Many observers assume organizations will compromise their values when convenient. For theological schools, whose authority depends on moral credibility, such perceptions can be especially damaging. If we say one thing and do another, people will believe what we do.
Fidelity doesn’t demand rigidity. Missions can, and do, develop over time, but that has to be intentional, articulated, and rooted in purpose.
What do we ‘just’ do?
Sincerity
What’s the story only your institution can tell?
Every institution began as an answer to a need. Someone believed the world required this particular school – not just any school, but this one. Over time, that sense of necessity can fade, replaced by routine operations or institutional self-preservation.
Sincerity recovers the original question: Why does the world need us, and what would it miss if we disappeared?
In an age in which information is ubiquitous and educational options are plentiful, traditional markers of prestige carry less weight. Libraries are digital. Lectures are online. Expertise seems to be widely distributed. What distinguishes institutions may not be what they possess but what they form – the people they shape and the communities that nurture them.
I have sat with leaders who struggled to articulate their institution’s uniqueness, then suddenly found language that felt both simple and profound: “We ‘just’ prepare people for this tradition,” or “We ‘just’ care for these students in this way,” or “We ‘just’ stand at the center of this movement.” Such statements may sound modest, but, again, there is power and calling in “just.”
Sincerity resists the temptation to inflate or generalize. It doesn’t claim to be everything for everyone. Instead, it names the “just” – the particular contribution the institution is called to make in the world. Institutions don’t need a single script repeated verbatim. They need a shared sense of who they are and why they exist – a narrative strong enough to guide decisions but flexible enough to be contextualized.
Developing the narrative isn’t purely the task of a communications office. It belongs to the whole institution, especially those entrusted with governance and leadership. Boards, presidents, and advancement teams are uniquely positioned to convene the needed conversations, ask difficult questions, and resist the growth of stories that stray from the mission.
When that work is done well, storytelling becomes less about persuasion and more about testimony. The institution speaks with coherence because it lives with it. In the end, the goal is not to craft a better marketing message but to recover a faithful story – one that reflects the institution’s identity, aligns with its mission, and speaks credibly to the needs of the world.
That story is not “just” a story. It is the reason the institution exists at all.
