Kat Armstrong — Storyline Bible

Title & Source Summary

Episode: 350: Storyline with Kat Armstrong
Hosts: Marty Solomon and Brent Billings, with special guest Kat Armstrong (Bible teacher, ministry leader, Dallas Theological Seminary graduate, author of the Storyline Bible Studies, and co-founder of The Polished Network)
Focus: Recurring biblical imagery (mountains, valleys, trees, stones, sinners, and saints), the Bible as one unified story, and how to design Bible study that teaches people to study on their own

This episode is an interview rather than a teaching on one passage. Kat Armstrong talks about her six-book Storyline Bible Studies series, which comes in three pairs: Mountains & Valleys, Sticks & Stones, and Sinners & Saints. Each pair follows one strand of imagery through the whole biblical story. Kat explains where the series came from: a passing comment in Jonathan Pennington’s work about mountains in Matthew, and many questions from her young son Caleb. Marty builds the conversation around three words from his endorsement of the series: fresh, trustworthy, and consistent. He adds a bonus point at the end: the series equips readers to keep studying without it. Along the way they discuss why people seem bored with their faith, deconstruction and “reconstruction,” intertextuality, character types, and how Kat’s 20 years of leading small groups shaped her teaching.

Key Takeaways

• The Bible is one coherent, unified story. Many authors wrote it over more than a thousand years, yet recurring images like mountains, stones, and trees tie it together. Seeing that unity can help people “put their faith back together.”
• Geography and objects carry meaning. Kat believes the people, places, and things in Scripture are there for a reason. When the text names a mountain or a valley, it is worth asking why.
• Children read Scripture more concretely, and that is closer to the Hebrew way of thinking. Kids notice imagery because they meet the Bible mostly as stories, not “like an IKEA manual.” Marty notes that this concrete reading is closer to how the original audience related to the text.
• Curiosity keeps people engaged. Many believers are bored with their reading plans. A fresh angle on familiar texts can spark what Kat calls “holy curiosity.”
• Trustworthy does not have to mean shallow. Marty values resources that are well researched and aware of context, and that can still be used across church traditions without “throwing stones.”
• A consistent structure helps people form a habit. Every lesson moves through context, observation, interpretation, and application. That repeated rhythm builds a practice of study.
• The best Bible study equips people instead of making them dependent. The goal is for readers to finish able to open a concordance and trace a theme on their own.
• Biblical characters are layered, not one-dimensional. Like Anakin Skywalker, many figures in Scripture are “a little bit of both.” Seeing that complexity helps us remember people’s humanity.

Main Concepts & Theories

1. Thematic Imagery Across the Biblical Story

Kat’s series follows images through the canon instead of working book by book.

• Mountains: It started with Jonathan Pennington’s The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing. Pennington points out that in Matthew, Jesus preaches, is tempted, is transfigured, and commissions his disciples on mountains. The theme reaches back to Sinai and Old Testament mountains such as Mount Eden in Ezekiel 28. Brent found that chapter especially surprising.
• Valleys: Kat noticed that many great tests of faith happen in valleys:
  • David and Goliath (the Valley of Elah)
  • Deborah and Jael
  • Caleb and Joshua scouting the land
  • The valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23)
  • The valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37)
• Trees (Sticks): Kat researched this at the same time the BibleProject released a parallel series on trees.
• Stones: Kat’s favorite volume. She sees a clear movement across the story:
  • In the Old Testament, people gather, stack, break, and rebuild stones. Examples include Jacob’s stone pillow and pillars, Joshua’s memorial stones, and Moses’ stone tablets.
  • In the New Testament, the stone is rolled away from Jesus’ tomb, and Peter calls believers to be living stones (1 Peter 2:4–5).
  • Throughout, God is “the Rock,” the refuge and stronghold of the Psalms, whose character “does not crack.”

Simplified idea: This is close to what scholars call biblical theology or intertextuality. Later texts deliberately echo earlier ones, so an image gathers meaning each time it comes back.

2. Character Types and Archetypes (Sinners & Saints)

• This volume grew out of Caleb asking during the pandemic, “Is Anakin Skywalker a good guy or a bad guy?”
• Kat introduced him to the flawed hero archetype, such as Boromir in The Lord of the Rings.
• Sinners: New Testament figures who were marginalized or written off in their own setting but showed surprising faith.
• Saints: Religious insiders, such as some Pharisees and Sadducees, who missed what God was doing. Kat studied them in Scot McKnight’s class at Northern Seminary and found she could relate to them. Brent noted that Judas and Peter are both included.
• Central insight: God seems to repurpose familiar character types to draw readers into the story. Recognizing how complex people are works against black-and-white thinking.

3. Marty’s Endorsement Framework

4. The Four-Part Lesson Structure

Kat adapts Ray Lubeck’s approach to reading the Bible (“seeing, understanding, applying”):

1. Context: The historical and literary setting, and the reader’s own context. How might what is happening in my world shape how I read this today?
2. Observation: The passage is printed in the book. Readers underline, circle, and mark what they see before deciding what it means.
3. Interpretation: What did this mean for the original audience? Kat calls this a “slow build” because there are several interpretive steps to take before applying it.
4. Application: Reflection points. By this stage, many readers have already worked out some application on their own.

Free leader guides and sermon-series resources on her website remove barriers for small group and ministry leaders.

5. The Cultural Moment: Deconstruction and Reconstruction

• Kat observes that trust in institutions is at an all-time low. If people are not deconstructing, they are reconstructing.
• Many people tear out “rotten planks” with no clear plan to rebuild.
• Thoughtful readers now check a resource’s sources. Did the author quote women, scholars of color, and scholars from the majority world? Did they use real research tools or just a free online lexicon?
• Kat deliberately cites scholars who disagree with each other. Because her focus is imagery, not doctrine, she has room to do that.
• Her website’s tagline, “put your faith back together,” states the goal: seeing the story’s unity rebuilds trust in it.
• Brent adds that the series works just as well for beginners and long-time students as for people who are deconstructing.

6. Intertextuality in Kat’s Earlier Books

• No More Holding Back: Pairs Eve and Mary Magdalene. Both stories take place in a garden, and Mary’s story reads as an “Easter reversal” of Eve’s. The book aims to encourage women to serve wherever God sends them.
• The In-Between Place: Pairs Dinah (Genesis 34; the transcript says 38) with the woman at the well (John 4). The two stories are linked by location, Shechem and Sychar. Kat points to several reversals:
  • Dinah is silent. The Samaritan woman has what may be the longest recorded conversation with Jesus.
  • Dinah is traumatized. Jesus entrusts the Samaritan woman with good news.
  • In Dinah’s story a city is slaughtered. In John 4 a city experiences revival.
• Theme: Jesus comes to the hard places of our lives and redeems them, and geography works as a metaphor for that.

Examples & Applications

• Learning from children: Caleb nudged his mom during worship songs about God on the mountain. Later he handed her a sticky note with future themes: wine, water, boats, tables, vineyards. Application: Invite children into Bible study as real partners. Their concrete imagination often notices what adults miss.
• “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it”: Kat says she used to read Jacob’s dream at Bethel only for the angels and the stairway, and never noticed the stone. Application: Reread a familiar passage looking for one specific object or place.
• Reading Scripture in real life: Kat wrote the stones study while watching Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and seeing refugee children cross into Poland. The Psalms’ image of God as an unshakable rock spoke directly to a fragile moment. Application: Notice how current events shape your reading. That is part of the “context” step.
• The group project illustration: Getting three or four students to agree on one cohesive project is “like herding cats.” Yet the Bible holds together across centuries, authors, and genres. Application: Use this analogy when explaining the Bible’s unity to skeptics or new believers.
• Testing material at the dining table: Before signing her contract, Kat tested Mountains with a small group in her home, cut what didn’t work, and kept what did. Application: Teachers should get feedback from real learners before finalizing material.
• Beth Moore’s Sunday school influence: At 17, after just coming to faith, Kat slipped into Beth Moore’s 600-person adult class at Houston’s First Baptist Church. Moore handed out fill-in-the-blank worksheets and cited her sources. Kat hole-punched them, kept them in a binder, and went to the bookstore to buy the books Moore cited. Application: Citing sources invites learners to keep studying on their own.
• Doing your own study: Kat imagines readers who no longer need her books. They pull out a concordance, trace a theme like “boats” (Noah, Jonah, Peter, Paul), and find the connections themselves.

Potential Areas for Further Exploration

1. Mountains in Matthew: Read Pennington’s The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing and trace how Matthew presents Jesus in relation to Moses and Sinai.
2. Mount Eden in Ezekiel 28: Study how Ezekiel pictures Eden as God’s mountain, and how that connects Eden, Sinai, Zion, and the temple.
3. Stone theology: Follow stones through Genesis 28 (Bethel), Joshua 4 (memorial stones), Exodus 31–34 (the tablets), Psalm 118:22 (the rejected cornerstone), Daniel 2 (the stone cut without hands), and 1 Peter 2 (living stones).
4. Valleys as places of testing: Compare the Valley of Elah, the Valley of Achor (Joshua 7; Hosea 2:15), and Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones.
5. Intertextuality as a method: Explore Richard Bauckham and other scholars on how New Testament writers deliberately echo the Old Testament.
6. Dinah and the Samaritan woman: Study the role of Shechem in Genesis 12, 33–34, and Joshua 24, and how John 4 reverses those stories.
7. Eve and Mary Magdalene: Explore the garden imagery in John 20 and its echoes of Genesis 2–3.
8. Hermeneutics resources: Ray Lubeck’s Read the Bible for a Change and Ellen F. Davis and Richard Hays’ The Art of Reading Scripture.
9. Second Temple Judaism: Scot McKnight’s work on Pharisees, Sadducees, and early Jewish writings, to understand the “saints” who missed Jesus.
10. Hebraic versus Greek thinking: Why concrete, image-based thinking fits the Hebrew Bible better than abstract categories do.

Comprehension Questions

1. What comment in Jonathan Pennington’s work started Kat Armstrong’s Storyline series, and which events in Jesus’ life did he connect to mountains?
2. Kat describes a movement in stone imagery from the Old Testament to the New. What do people do with stones in the Old Testament, and how does that change with Jesus’ resurrection and Peter’s letter?
3. What three words did Marty use in his endorsement, and what bonus quality did he add? Why is it hard to be both “fresh” and “consistent”?
4. Name the four parts of each lesson in the Storyline studies. Why does Kat ask readers to consider their own context as well as the passage’s?
5. In The In-Between Place, how are Dinah’s story and the Samaritan woman’s story connected, and what are two reversals Kat identifies between them?

Personal Summary

This episode is a good reminder that the Bible is first a story, and stories are held together by images we can see and touch: mountains, valleys, trees, stones, and complicated people. Kat Armstrong’s series grew from curiosity and from a child’s questions. That fits Marty’s point that a concrete, image-centered reading is closer to how the Bible’s first audience heard it. Two things stand out. First, a well-designed study does more than pass on information. It builds habits of seeing, understanding, and applying, so readers can keep going on their own. Second, seeing Scripture’s unity across many authors and centuries can help people who feel bored or worn out put their faith back together. Characters like Anakin Skywalker, Peter, and Judas are “a little bit of both,” and the God who is the unbreakable Rock meets layered people in their valleys and invites them to become living stones.