We tell stories. That sounds so simple.

It's not.

We embody biblical stories.

We listen for suppressed voices and hidden tensions in old, well-known stories. We find that many of these voices and tensions belong to women who have been hidden (and sometimes buried) in these stories we all know so well.

The Provoking the Gospel Project team is a multi-generational group of storytellers and performers that works together year-round on various projects. The core of the group is drawn from talented undergraduate students at Augustana College. Team members bring a wide variety of backgrounds, interests, and special abilities to the work of Provoking the Gospel. Team members have come to us from backgrounds in Theatre, Elementary Education, Pre-Medical studies, International Relations, and Religion (among others). We have sent members of the Project on to graduate work in various fields, including seminary studies, International Conflict Mediation, and Religion and the Performing Arts.

The work of the Provoking the Gospel Project is a carefully designed, fully collaborative process. We aim to incorporate the voices and bodies of all team members and to expand our sense of what the stories we perform can mean and become.

We believe that biblical texts are public stories. Public stories (as we understand them) are stories that everyone has a right to hear, tell, and interpret, whether they are insiders or outsiders. That means that we should expect to learn from our audiences every time we perform. So far we have been right to expect this. We are constantly looking for audiences who will teach us new things about the texts we have undertaken to embody and perform.