By Austin B. Tucker
Fifteen-year-old Charles Spurgeon, a few months after his conversion, began teaching a Bible class for younger boys. One day a lad interrupted his lesson. “This is very dull, Teacher. Can’t you pitch us a yarn?” Young Spurgeon could and did. Later the Prince of Preachers said he learned to tell stories in that class because he was “obliged to tell them.”
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Lisa Lax, NBC-TV’s Senior Sports Producer needed to know how to keep viewers watching the Atlanta Olympics. The network paid $456 million for the broadcast rights and budgeted $3.5 billion for Olympics coverage through the year 2008. They simply could not afford for you and me to tune out as so many did the Seoul Olympics. So, in the six years leading up to Atlanta, the network interviewed some 10,000 viewers. What do people like and what do they dislike about sports on TV?
The big finding of all that research came down to one fact: Tell them stories and they will watch. The result was more than 135 two-to-three minute narratives the network produced and scattered throughout the very successful Atlanta Olympics coverage.2 People pay attention to a story.
How can preachers enhance the narrative quality of their sermons? Instead of resorting to omnibus volumes of stale anecdotes, try these exercises. Here are seven ideas for adding storytelling power to your sermons.
A short story or even a whole novel may be reduced to one or two hundred words. Keep the plot in place. Here’s one that illustrates the destructive power of the tongue warned of in James 3.
A little old man stooped on the dusty road to pick up a “Piece of String” in Guy de Maupassant’s tale by that name. He was embarrassed to note that someone saw him do so, and he quickly hid the innocent scrap. By the time he got to town to discover that a wallet was lost, he was already accused of finding it. His denials and explanations about “a piece of string” seemed only to confirm growing suspicion. Then, a week later, someone did find the wallet and return it. Instead of clearing the old man, this gave the rumors momentum. Shortly after that, he died. Talk killed him.3
If the sermon can afford twice the space for this illustration, add dialogue, names and other details from the story.
Comic strips have something of a story line built in, but even a cartoon can provide a bit of narrative with setting, characters, and plot. A Forbes magazine cartoon shows a grandfatherly gentleman in an oversized easy chair talking to a little girl seated opposite him in a matching chair. Around them in the elegant sitting room is ample evidence of wealth. He is answering her question about how he made his fortune.