TABLE OF CONTENTS. Introduction... 5 STORIES WORK... 9 STORIES PREPARE HEARTS...29 STORIES PLANT SEEDS ABOUT JESUS... 53

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2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction STORIES WORK Chapter One: Why Stories Work Chapter Two: How Stories Work STORIES PREPARE HEARTS Chapter Three: Why Is This World a Mess? Chapter Four: I Don t Need Your Religion Chapter Five: People Like Me Don t Belong in Church STORIES PLANT SEEDS ABOUT JESUS Chapter Six: One Thing I Know Chapter Seven: What Do You Want with Me? Chapter Eight: Who Is He? STORIES WATER AND CULTIVATE JESUS SEEDS Chapter Nine: It s Not Too Good to Be True Chapter Ten: Can You Help? Chapter Eleven: There Is No Good Enough Chapter Twelve: So Then What Happens? Conclusion: Now What?

3 INTRODUCTION If you had the power to tell everyone in the world just one thing, what would it be? Since you are reading this book, I think I know the answer. You want our world to know about Jesus. As a parent, what is the one thing you want your children to know? What is it that is more important than their education? More important than whom they marry? I know in our house, the answer was Jesus. If our kids just knew Jesus, everything else would work out. What is the one thing you want to know above all else? What is the one thing that is so important you could know nothing else as long as you knew this one thing? It is Jesus. You know because someone told you the story of Jesus. It may have been your parents, or your mate. It may have been a friend or a preacher. Someone loved you enough to tell it to you. Maybe they shared the story by how they lived their lives. Perhaps they told you their story of finding Jesus. Perhaps they shared the stories of God s people found in the Bible. But they shared it with you. And now you want to share Jesus with the people you know. This book will help you with that. It will motivate you, encourage you, and equip you. But let me caution you about what this book is not. It is not another formula you learn and regurgitate when you have the opportunity. It does not contain the greatest program for personal work, evangelism, and fulfilling the Great Commission. It is not a program at all. It is not a magic bullet to convince us to share our faith. It is a resource. It is written on the assumption that whomever is reading it wants to share the good news of Jesus with their family, their friends, their neighbors, and their co-workers. And I believe that is what you want to do. Just like I do. 5

4 It Starts With Knowing the Story Everybody has one. You do. I do. We all do. We each have a life story, and they are all different and unique. And our lives intersect with others family, friends, community to form a collective story. Our story. God has a story too. It is one of love, hope, peace, forgiveness, purpose, and joy. It is told in God s own words recorded in the Bible. It is seen in the life of Jesus, His only Son. It is told in the lives of the people of God as they live out that story every day. God has invited each of us into His story. He longs for us to be part of it, for it to be our story. He makes that possible through Jesus. God uses us to share that story with others. We share it with everyone we know so that it can become their story too. That is what this book is about: Using your story, and the stories of God s people through the ages, to invite people into God s story so it becomes their story. Jesus Told Stories Jesus was a great story teller. He told stories about God, about people that lived a long time ago, and about Himself. He told stories from nature, farming, and everyday life. He told stories about trees, splinters, yeast, seeds, and hypocrites. They were simple, true-to-life, and so easy to understand. They were funny, sharp, insightful, and sometimes sad. Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable Matthew 13:34. Jesus loved stories so much that it is the best way to describe His teaching method. He used parables everyday stories to teach us about the things that really matter. Paul Did Too Paul the apostle must have told his story hundreds of times. It is a great story of grace and redemption as he moves from Saul, the persecutor of Jesus, to Paul, the messenger of God s grace. I know he must have shared his journey often because it is told several times in the Bible. It is told once in the history of the church in Acts 9. We have Paul s testimony in Acts 22 in his own words. It is told again in Acts 26 when he is on trial before King Agrippa. In his second letter to the church in Corinth, he writes with great emotion of his personal journey with Jesus. 6

5 And I Do I do not remember when I first heard about God and His people. I have known about Jesus all of my life. My mom and dad were already part of God s story when I was born. But I do vividly remember when I decided to claim the story as my own for the rest of eternity. I remember the sense of urgency to be crucified with Christ in baptism, and to be raised to a new life. I knew then that it was personal. God loved me, Jesus died for me, and I could be part of their story forever. Even now I can relive the feeling of joy I had, the freedom from sin I felt, and the sense of now belonging to something bigger than me. I made that commitment at an early age, the summer before my sixth grade year, so many of my struggles came after I was a Christian. I have battled sin and Satan. I am a living testimony to grace, forgiveness, mercy, and restoration. It is the story I am still living out today. It Is My Family Story My mom was born into the story, but not my dad. My mom invited him into it. Her mom was born into it, but not her dad. He was 81 years old when he decided to become a Christian. My wife was a believer when I met her, as were her parents. But it was her dad who brought her mom into the story of Jesus. My kids were raised in God s story, but I still remember the incredible sense of joy and pride when they made it their own story. My daughter-inlaw was raised in the story. My daughter shared the story with her husband, and I felt that same sense of joy and pride when I baptized him into the kingdom of God. Now my grandkids are all being raised in the Jesus story, and I am confident that some day they will make it personal and claim it as their own. How About Your Story? How do you fit into our story? How did you learn about Jesus? Why did you decide to give your life to following Him? What difference has He made in your life? What would your life be like without Him? Why is He your hope for life? How does He bring you peace in a hard world? How has He made you content no matter the circumstances of your life? How has He helped you find purpose for your life? We Are Going to Share Our Story All the stories of God s people through the centuries mingle together in one powerful story: the story of God and His people through the ages. It is the 7

6 story of Jesus told in the Bible and lived out in His people. It is my story and it is your story. And it is the one our world must hear, so it can become their story. In this book we are going to share our story. We will explore how and why sharing stories works. We will discover what happens when you share your story, and those of God s people. We will see how they help prepare people to meet Jesus, how they introduce Jesus, and how they help people on their journey to accept Jesus. Stories that will enable you to invite your family, your friends, and your neighbors into the story of Jesus. So it becomes their story. So can I tell you a story? 8

7 I N T R O PA R T 1 STORIES WORK J esus used stories to teach people about God. That alone would be reason enough to use stories, but I believe Jesus used the most effective way to communicate to the greatest number of people. So He chose parables stories. The Bible is a collection of stories that communicate the truths God wants us to know. The most important of these is Jesus. Read the gospels and hear again the stories of Jesus: Bethlehem and the manger, a boy in the temple, healing stories, teaching through parables, eating supper in an upper room, on trial, crucified, an empty tomb, and a risen Savior meeting with His disciples. The book that tells of the explosive growth of the church is called Acts. What are the acts? Stories of people finding and sharing Jesus: religious leaders, soldiers, businesswomen, jailers, politicians. Stories work. They did then, and they do now. So let s see why they work, how they work, and how you will be able to use them to invite your family and friends into the story of Jesus. 9

8 CHAPTER ONE WHY STORIES WORK But why is telling stories the most effective way to communicate the good news of Jesus? This is the most important message anyone can hear, so it becomes critical that we use the best method to share it. So here are the reasons stories communicate the message of Jesus so well. It Is a Simple Story God is holy and perfect. We are not. He wants us to live with Him forever. He sent Jesus so we could. That is God s story. All of our stories fit into this simple narrative. My story is about unholy, imperfect, sinful me who is going to live with God forever because Jesus makes me holy, perfect, and sinless in God s eyes. Not because of what I have done, but in spite of what I have done. Because of what Jesus has done. So my story is wrapped up in the story of Jesus, which is God s story. And your story. Our story. Stories Are Easy to Tell Everyone can tell a story. Ask a grandparent to tell you about their grandchildren and watch their excitement. Ask a university student about their relationships, and they will start telling stories. Almost everyone I know has a great wedding story or a Christmas story. We all can tell sports stories or stories about our favorite pets. We all tell family stories to our friends. Listen to our conversations. We love to tell stories. But we get nervous when this shifts to the spiritual stories of our life. Sometimes people do not even realize they have a spiritual story. But you do! Remember who first introduced you to Jesus. It might have been your parents, or a Bible class teacher, or a spouse, or a preacher, or a friend. Do you remember when you realized the story of Jesus was real in your life? You could easily tell about your baptism: when it happened, where it occurred, who did 11

9 the baptizing. For some, it was a preacher in a baptistery at the church building during an assembly when you were twelve. For others, it might have been in a lake in the middle of the night by one of your friends. Some of us can even tell about times after our baptism when we understood something new about our relationship with Jesus. Maybe it was because a spouse taught us to pray. Or we journeyed through a dark night of sorrow and realized God was with us and helping us. Perhaps it was an insight into a particular passage from Scripture. Or the first time you told someone about Jesus and saw them become a Christian. Or the first time you sacrificially gave and God honored that. Some of our Jesus stories are tales of sin and struggle: doubts with our faith, battles to overcome addictions, wars fought against Satan. Some of us have redemption and restoration stories. But we all have the stories of our life in Christ. The more we tell them, the easier it gets to do it again and again. The more we share stories of salvation, triumph, and struggle the more we realize that we are in this together. We realize how much our stories have in common. We see how many of the stories of the people of God through the ages are just like ours. People Will Listen to Stories Everyone loves to hear a good story, which is why stories are such a good communication tool. Sporting events are often framed as David vs. Goliath, a story first told in the Bible. Political campaigns are built around compelling storylines. Media builds their programming around stories. For centuries, storytellers were valued as an essential part of the tribe, the family, and the village. Great communicators are great storytellers. This is true for the message of Jesus. Remember Matthew said, Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable (Matthew 13:34). Parables are just stories. Jesus taught using stories from the Old Testament, stories from agriculture, stories from nature, stories from everyday life, and stories from the culture around him. It is still true today. Great preachers are great storytellers. Our story is personal. For a person who knows nothing or very little about Jesus, quoting Scripture has very little appeal. Facts and figures are not inspiring or inviting. It is the difference between saying that Jesus was born in a manger to a virgin and telling the story of the young Mary. She has to explain to her fiancé that she is pregnant, so you can imagine the emotion- 12

10 al roller coaster they must have endured. You can almost feel the stress they shared of not being able to find a place to stay, and ending up delivering a baby in a stable surrounded by animals. One of those methods is interesting. One is exciting and inviting. And when we tell the stories of our Jesus, it is personal. When we tell our story as part of the Jesus story, it is compelling because it is clear that it is the core story of our life. Our story is communal. When we share our stories, it is clear that we believe we are not alone in this story. It is why we must learn the stories of those in our church families. Their stories are our stories. We learn that we are not alone, that we are not the only one to feel the way we feel. I am continually amazed at the people who hear a story from the Bible and see themselves in the story. Many of us have seen our story in Scripture. For me, it is the story King David. His story of faith, courage, lust, struggle, exile, redemption, and leadership is my story. You have seen your story in the Bible. It is our shared story. Our story is bigger than any one of us. People hunger to be a part of something bigger than themselves. That is why our story is so compelling. We are part of changing the world. We are part of the greatest war the world has ever seen: the battle of good vs. evil. And we are part of the winning side. When we tell the story of God leading His people out of Egypt, parting the Red Sea, and destroying the army pursuing His people that is our story. Those are our people. That story is part of our DNA. So even today, the story is so much bigger than any of us. We are part of a kingdom that transcends political and geographic boundaries. We are a kingdom, a chosen people, found everywhere you go in this world. The story is what connects us. God has acted in this world to redeem His people from evil. From Moses and the Red Sea, through David and Goliath, Jesus versus Satan in the wilderness and at the cross, Stephen s death and Paul s conversion, and in a group of seven persecuted churches in Asia. Those are our stories. As are the stories of those through the centuries who gave their lives to God s call. People such as Polycarp and Dietrich Bonheoffer, men who lived centuries apart, but who were martyred because they lived out their faith in a world of evil. Our story is never-ending. We are part of a story that started long before any of us were born and that will continue forever. There is something incredibly attractive about being part of something that lasts forever. To be part of the story impacts people forever. So we tell the stories of Adam, 13

11 Moses, and Mary. We see our stories reflected in their stories. In our church and in our family we tell the stories. We have told them for generations. We will tell them for generations to come. Our story will never end. Our story is still being written. Our story the story of God and His people is not just ancient history. That story is still being written today. Lives are being changed every day. Alcoholics become sober. Sexually immoral become pure. Angry people become sweet. Greedy people become givers. Captives are set free. Lost are found. Blind see and the lame walk. Sinners are saved. Individual stories continue to be written into God s story. Victories. Struggles. Pain. Joy. Growth. Family. Love. Temptation. Grace. Our stories are still being written. This lets others know that their life story does not have to stay like it is. They have the opportunity to rewrite the ending. Just like we are doing. Our story invites others to enter. Our story is not just about someone else. It is not just about us. It is a story that invites others into the narrative. They actually can become part of a living story. The whole reason for sharing our story is so that others have the opportunity to let their story become part of our story. It is not just for us. It is a story for everyone. And that is why you must share our story so that others have the same opportunity you have had. This Is Not How We Have Been Doing It That s correct. Most of our efforts to reach people for Jesus have not centered on Jesus, but on what was often referred to as teaching the plan of salvation. Typically, that involved two parts. First, the important facts were established: we are all sinners and Jesus died for our sins. Secondly, it explained what steps you need to follow to become a Christian. There was heavy emphasis on what you should know, and perhaps not enough emphasis on who you should know. It became easy to know about Jesus, not so easy to know Jesus. It became too easy to focus on the plan instead of the man. We often would use passages of Scripture to emphasize the points we wanted to make. So it became a chain reference of Scriptures. But teaching people this way was intimidating to the average person. A non-christian who has never really studied their Bible can be very intimidated by turn to Acts 2:38. Many people may not even have their own Bible. Almost certainly they will have trouble looking up every passage unless we are right there with them helping them find the next reference. So we immediately place them 14

12 in a subservient role. It is going to be difficult for them to ask questions or be honest with their feelings. After all, we have probably already established that they are not as smart and knowledgeable as we are. The secret in that scenario is that we were not that smart either. Most of the people I knew that used this method memorized the starting verse. Then they wrote the next verse in the margin so they could know where to go next, and often made sure to write the page number so it was easy to find the passage. It was like having our own cheat sheet for Jesus. That is why it was hard for most people to learn to share their faith. It was hard to memorize all those passages. It was awkward to ask people to study with us. It was not a lack of desire. It was something that every believer wanted to do, yet it seemed so hard. It was not natural. So We Made It Worse One of the memory devices used to teach someone the plan of salvation was to use your five fingers to correspond to five steps: hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized. You would then learn a Bible passage that emphasized the appropriate step. I grew up in churches of Christ and deeply appreciate the emphasis on being a people of the Book. It was a source of pride sometimes justifiable, other times not that we followed the Bible only. We had no creed, no doctrine other than just what the Bible said. But I wonder how our five steps sounded to someone outside our fellowship? Did it sound as if we were espousing a church of Christ doctrine with supporting proof texts? Jesus never taught salvation this way. Neither will you find this approach in the conversion stories in Acts. It was too easy to see these steps as a list of works to be checked off in order. Baptism is not a step in the process of salvation. It is a death and a burial. It is a response to the good news of Jesus. Salvation is not a plan. It is a relationship. It Was Because of Walter Walter Scott was one of the most effective evangelists of the Restoration movement in the 1820s and 1830s in and around the Western Reserve in Ohio. He was of Scottish background, trained at the University of Edinburgh, and heavily influence by the rational thought of the Enlightenment and how it applied to religious study. He had a very analytical approach to Scripture and saw the gospel as a series offacts, commands, and promises. He was one of the first to strongly articulate Acts 2:36-38 as the primary invitation for 15

13 sinners to come to Jesus by being baptized for the remission of sins and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Scott was not very effective as a located preacher. His writings were never very popular. But he was a gifted evangelist. Though his evangelistic preaching was very emotional, the sermons themselves were a model of reasoned thought as opposed to an appeal to feelings. As he traveled around conducting what he called gospel meetings, he developed a very effective method of generating interest. He would go to the local schools as they were letting out and teach the children a simple finger exercise to go home and tell their parents, inviting them to come back that night to learn more. The exercise was to hold up their five fingers and repeat: faith, repentance, baptism, remissions of sins, and gift of the Holy Spirit. That model became the most common method of evangelistic teaching among churches of Christ for 150 years. Oddly, over time the five things evolved to hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized. I doubt Walter Scott intended for that to become a model. It was a technique to raise interest among people who would then come to hear gospel sermons. We let it become a plan. So Let s Try a Different Way Almost every child raised in the church of Christ learned the five steps of salvation. Many of them remained faithful and active Christians all of their lives. But many did not. They learned what to do and almost all of them did it but they missed the connection to Jesus. We thrilled them with the exciting stories of God s people, and then changed to a rational explanation of what to do about Jesus. Facts replaced stories. Commands and promises became the intellectual currency to try and convert the heart. It is our life story that leads people to be receptive concerning Jesus. Our stories are thrilling and exciting just like the family stories recorded in Scripture. Sharing stories with people is more natural more real than a list of facts. Many of the stories I share and that you will share are from Scripture, so it is a Bible study. It is just that we can feel comfortable sharing stories. They are not manipulative, they are sincere, and they are easy to do. They are real. They work. So, Can I Tell You a Story? My Pap-pa Charlie was thirty when he and Mam-ma married. She was eighteen. He was a farmer and she was a school teacher. I m not sure how that was 16

14 possible at eighteen but that s how the family story goes. And they were my mom s parents, my grandparents. She was a Christian, he was not. She made him promise he would always take her to church and he did for fifty years. She sat down front with the women. He sat on the back row and looked at the ceiling. He made her promise she would play dominoes with him every night. Real dominoes double twelves. So I grew up playing dominoes. I was all grown up (well, I was twenty-one) and married when I went back to hold a gospel meeting. My wife Marsha was with me and as expected, we were playing dominoes Saturday night. Melchizedek, Pap-pa announced with authority as he played his domino. I immediately started trying to recall every domino term I had ever heard. The only reference I could think of was the name of some long-ago character from the Bible. He said, I ll bet you didn t know I knew that, did you? Now I was sure. He was talking about someone in the Bible. He then proceeded to bet me that he knew more about Melchizedek than I did. I had a degree in Bible from a Christian university and was starting graduate work. I was a preacher. No way could I lose. So we started. Me: Genesis. Pap-pa: Abraham. Me: Lot. Pap-pa: Salem. I knew then I was in trouble. So being a quick thinker, I asked him how he knew about Melchizedek. He told that each night before she would play dominoes with him, Mam-ma made him listen to a chapter out of the Bible. This had been going on for decades. The next morning he came to church and sat near the front. At lunch he asked me how much I got paid. I told him they gave me $20. He said it paid better than farming and he should have been a preacher. After all, he knew enough Bible. So I told him that it wasn t enough to know the stories, you had to believe it you had to buy in. The next morning, at 81 years of age, my Pap-pa asked me to drive him up to the town church and baptize him. And I did. It took him fifty years to make his story part of God s story. But he did. I tell this story to people who are getting discouraged at the lack of results they are having from their teaching. I tell it to people who have family members they want to reach for Jesus. But I also tell it to older people who think it is too late to change their story. I tell it to people who like to play 17

15 dominoes. I tell it to people who ask about my family. I tell it because it shows the power of the example of a godly life. I tell it because it shows the power of God s Word. And I tell it to invite them to become part of God s story. QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT, REFLECTION, DISCUSSION, AND SHARING 1. Who taught you the story of Jesus? 2. How did they teach you the good news? 3. Describe your baptism: who did it, where was it done, what time of day, and other details. 4. How did you feel when you came up out of the water? 5. Share something God has done in your life in the last year. 6. Share one way your life is different because of Jesus. 18