Stories
Stories. Everyone has them. They are shared around a campfire on a starry summer night. They are sad, joyful, and everything in between. They are of lessons learned, often the hard way. They serve as warnings and inspiration. Jesus used them to get his point across. The Bible is full of them. True stories. My church has, for a long time, encouraged the use of stories to be employed in services and as a means to help others. For a while I resisted this idea, thinking “Shouldn’t Jesus be enough? Whatever these people tell me I can just hear right from Jesus.” As I was pondering these thoughts I was confronted with more issues in which the element of story was used very powerfully in my life. I heard a sermon series on Jesus’ use of parables [a fancy word for stories], which really helped me experience for myself some of their power and effectiveness. Then during Founder’s Week this year I heard an incredible story from one of the speakers, Virelle Kidder, author of “Meet Me At The ...