Living Illustrations

Yesterday, I spoke to the student at my home church. Talk about deja vu all over again...man, it was weird thinking that just a few years earlier, I was sitting in the seats listening to the speaker wondering when he would ever finish...:-)

We went to the worship service after the student gathering and I saw one of my big takeaways from Exponential in action: the power of giving people living illustrations.

Instead of having a full-blown sermon, about 6 people shared stories of how God has been at work in their lives. Some shared how they began to trust Jesus with their lives. Some shared about unique provision. One lady shared a powerful lesson of how she learned what it meant to be adopted into God's family by being adopted into her earthly family. Each story pulled you in more and more.

The pastor, who is also my father in-law didn't have to preach anything. All he had to do was say, "This is how God is at work in these people - He's at work in you, too." From there he gave people the opportunity to take steps similar to those taken by the people who shared their stories.

Powerful stuff! As Andy said last week, "Stories do more to communicate the vision of your church than anything else?"

I'm curious...how do you tell stories in your church? Leave a comment and let us know...

Comments

[Ben]

We learn of stories through our cell families, connect cards, relationships and etc... We ask people to tell the story they have constantly.. The catch for us is that we video almost all of our stories and show them via video. Our staff experienced an awful moment allowing someone to tell their story "live." It was one of those, please get off the stage "psycho" moments.

[jay hardwick]

ben - thanks for sharing. no doubt, live stories can be a bit risky...but videos can come off as slick and produced. tough line to walk. i've had a few train wrecks myself with live stories...

i was hoping to have more response to this...i'm really curious as to how leaders/churches effectively tell stories in a systematic way to celebrate what God is doing and to give people living illustrations of success in relation to the mission/vision. we have so much at our disposal...blogs, facebook, twitter, youtube..i'd love to hear how some of you are using them to tell stories. even if you're just experimenting, i'd love to hear about it.