Sermon

Why I Tell Stories When I Preach

~ Mike Skinner ~ 1 Comment

2015_03_17-Storytelling-For-Startups

“Profound truth, like the vocabulary of virtue, eludes formulation. It quickly becomes rigid, gives way to abstraction or cliche. But put a spiritual insight to a story, an experience, a face; describe where it anchors in the ground of your being; and it will change you in the telling and others in the listening.” – Krista Trippett, Becoming Wise

If you’ve heard me preach, you’ve probably heard me tell a few stories. Some of them are funny, some of them are personal and vulnerable, and some of them are drawn from history or current events. If you’ve heard me preach at a larger retreat or conference, you’ve likely heard a collection of my very best stories – narratives that I have told hundreds of times and customized in millions of ways until the story is exactly as funny and useful as needed.

At my last retreat, I was getting mic’ed up in the back of the worship hall before the third session began and a group of students walked up to me asking me what fun stories I would be telling that night. I gave them a grin and simply said, “I don’t know, I might have a couple good ones.” Far from feeling like I was just entertaining a few hundred young people with funny stories, that experience affirmed for me that I was connecting with the audience and that as a result I would be able to drive home powerful truths with even more effectiveness.

I believe firmly that the art of story-telling is a crucial skill to learn and practice for the purpose of preaching more powerful sermons. I believe this so strongly that I listen to a new stand-up comedian (I prefer narrative comedians over those who specialize in one-liners) in the car or airplane as I head to my next speaking gig. I do this for many reasons. It’s an entertaining way to pass the time, it builds a fire in me about how powerful the spoken word can be, and it’s a great way to develop speaking skills of timing, tone, and story-telling. Good comedians are experts at these skills and I’ve found that great preachers often have similarly developed instincts for public speaking.

So why do I tell stories?

1) Stories capture attention. 

What I’ve found as a public speaker is that a story doesn’t even have to be all that funny or presented in an organized way to captivate an audience. Those things certainly help, but there is something deeply human about our love for stories. It’s not just children who crave to hear a good story, either. When I’m weaving a good story together I’ve seen hundreds of adults listen with mouths agape, just as entranced as any child has ever been reading a children’s book at night. Stories capture attention, and as a speaker, once I have a group’s attention it is that much easier to drive home transformative truths.

2) Stories build empathy.

Stories connect a speaker far away on big a stage under bright lights – often unknown to the listeners – to the audience in an intimate way in just a manner of minutes. Speaking truth into people’s lives requires that they trust you. Identifying with the audience with a funny or relatable story allows people to tune-in not only to your presentation but also to you as a person. A good story, told correctly, will connect something I have experienced or learned in my life and allow me to pass on that wisdom in the role of a trusted friend, not a irrelevant stranger, boring lecturer, or a heavy-handed moralist. In this way, audiences are able to more deeply receive words of encouragement and challenge.

3) Jesus told stories.

I think it’s a remarkably over-looked fact that the majority of Jesus’ teaching consisted of parables. These powerful narratives were easily relatable, often funny (Jesus is quite the comedian in the Gospels, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear), and consistently challenging and subversive. These stories changed lives. They convinced people to leave their homes and follow Jesus on his path throughout Galilee and towards Jerusalem. We often whitewash the counter-cultural messages in many of Jesus’ parables, but I find it likely that his story-telling was a key contributor to his eventually crucifixion. Jesus told stories because he knew they were powerful and transformative ways to communicate the good news of the arrival of the Father’s loving Kingdom. I’m more that happy to humbly follow in his footsteps.

Mike Skinner
http://www.mikeskinner.org

If you’d like to inquire about booking me for an upcoming speaking event, please email me at booking@mikeskinner.org. I’m currently focusing my speaking events around the following three topics: Christianity, Mental Health, and Education. These topics can easily be combined as well to serve the needs of your group! I look forward to speaking with you about how I can help you and your organization make a greater impact in our world.

Four Lessons from Psalm 133

~ Mike Skinner ~ Leave a comment

How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore.
Psalm 133

1) God’s People Are Called to Live in True Community

“Born-Again” christians aren’t orphans – we are a part of a transtemporal and multinational community.

2) True Community is Good & Pleasant

The Christian life involves sacrifice and is only possible when you have a strong, faithful support system.

3) True Community Mediates God’s Presence & Creates a Transformed Life

Individuals are bad at creating and sustaining change. Christ-likeness develops over time and in the context of a close-knit community.

4) True Community is the Cornerstone of God’s Eternal Plan

Our Triune God, perfect community in himself, is drawing us (not as individuals, but as brothers and sisters) into his family for an eternity of joy.

Matthew 19 & Rich Christians: Possible or Impossible?

~ Mike Skinner ~ 4 Comments

Few stories fascinate me as much as the tale of the Rich Young Man (Matthew 19:16-30).

A summary: Jesus encounters an extremely wealthy man who, by all means, is also a very moral man. However, the man realizes that he is still on the outside of the Kingdom and is not experiencing eternal life. Jesus’ solution is a command –  sell all that he has and give it to the poor. In this way, Jesus implies, he will reach a moral standard consistent with entering into the Kingdom and experiencing eternal life. Indeed, this was the path already followed by his closest disciples (Mt. 19:27). The man walks away sad and unable to obey. Jesus, never one to pass up a teachable moment, tells the disciples that it is “difficult” for a rich person to enter the Kingdom. The then defines “difficult” as “impossible”: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.

The primary reason this is such a fascinating passage to me is because… I’m rich. And I live and worship in a wealthy (both relatively and globally) city. And yet there doesn’t seem to be an anxiety over our growing bank accounts, even with the extremely disparaging warnings about wealth like this one from Jesus. I constantly wonder, have we really felt the weight of Jesus’ words?

It is impossible for a rich person to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

The passage also fascinates me from a hermeneutical angle – I love analyzing the interpretive practices of various groups. I know first-hand why this statement from Jesus doesn’t scare the hell out of those who are well-off. It’s because two verses later Jesus says, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Like a boy pursuing a girl playing hard-to-get, rich Christians are quick to go, “So, you’re saying there IS a chance.” And this statement from Jesus allows us to effectively forget his previously scary words. The moral import of his warning is drowned out by the credit-card shaped angel on our shoulder saying, “See, it’s possible! Don’t worry so much!”

Unfortunately, I’ve come to believe that this as an incorrect reading of the passage. The question needs to be asked: what exactly is Jesus referencing when he speaks of human impossibilities that are possible for God? Is it the possibility that a rich person will enter into the Kingdom or is it the possibility that a person will give up their riches in order to enter the Kingdom? This is a subtle yet incredibly significant interpretive decision. You see, Jesus never changes his command to the young ruler. The hope that Jesus holds out is not that the man might enter the Kingdom despite his disobedience. It is the hope that the man, through a powerful work of God, might come to a place where he fully loves God and others by giving away his possessions.

Stanley Hauerwas nails it, as usual: “Our temptation is to think that Jesus’ reply is intended to “let us off the hook.” Being rich is a problem, we may think, but God will take care of us, the rich, the only way God can. Yet such a response fails to let the full weight of Jesus’ observation about wealth have the effect that it should. We cannot serve God and mammon (Mt. 6:24). Jesus’ reply challenges not only our wealth, but our very conception of salvation. To be saved, to be made a member of the church through baptism, means that our lives are no longer our own. We are made vulnerable to one another in a manner such that what is ours can no longer be free of the claims of others. As hard as it may be to believe, Jesus makes clear that salvation entails our being made vulnerable through the loss of our possessions.” [1]

Or as Frederick Dale Bruner says: “What Jesus does not mean by “this is impossible for human beings” is the interpretation that says ‘If you will just be born again and experience miraculous conversion, you can then continue seeking money, honor, and success, for conversion does not replace all these earthly goods; it actually assist their acquisition.’ . . . . What Jesus does mean by this verse is that God can work the miracle of putting God instead of gain on the throne of the human heart (cf. Ps 119:36). No human power can displace the desire for “more” as the reigning human drive. Only God’s power can. Unless this miracle of dethronement-enthronement occurs again and again, there is no hope of salvation. That is the sober meaning of verse 26.” [2]

How Then Shall We, The Wealthy, Live?

I’ve already acknowledged that I am a relatively wealthy person (and not currently selling all of my possessions on eBay). So, I pass no judgement on those who like me follow Jesus and have wealth. However, I do believe two things:
– First, Jesus’s command to the rich young ruler is not a universal command. He doesn’t command all to give up everything, even as he clearly commands a radical commitment to the poor and oppressed from His people.
– Second, I don’t know the cut-off point! I have no clue “how rich” you can be and still enter into the Kingdom. So I can’t say “you have too much” (and neither should you).

What I do know, and would expect of those who follow Christ, is that we should be a people with bank accounts and storage closets that communicate a sacrificial love for God and others, instead of for ourselves and our stuff. I also expect this to be a gradual, consistent, and clear progression in our lives.

How do I respond to Jesus’ statements about money in this story?
First, with some anxiety. Second, with effort and intentionality, hoping that this year my habits of spending and accumulating will reflect Kingdom values more than it did last year.

Needle-through-a-camel

[1] Hauerwas, Matthew (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible),174-175.
[2] Bruner, Matthew, 308.

William C. Placher on “Biblical Preaching” – #QOTD

~ Mike Skinner ~ 1 Comment

It ought to be a terrifying business to find yourself speaking the Word of God to the people of God. “Biblical preaching” should never be the slogan for noncontroversial, nostalgic piety, for the Bible tells about a covenant that shaped every aspect of people’s lives, prophets who challenged the powers-that-be, and a Christ murdered by the establishment of his time. These narratives of a vulnerable God are not safe stories. Indeed, the call to preach the Word of God may sometimes be a call to cause pain, to make yourself unpopular, to lose your job. The gospel of the crucified Jesus is not a safe retreat from the storms of contemporary social issues but sometimes the most direct and radical address to them that one can imagine.

– William C. Placher in Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology and Scripture (141)

* Featured in our list of Cataclysmic’s Favorite Books of 2013

A Lamech Christology

~ Mike Skinner ~ 2 Comments

The Apostle Paul regularly utilized what is called “Adam Christology” – that is, a way of understanding Christ in light of Adam. Just as Adam brought death, so Christ brought life. Just as all those who are in Adam will die, so all those who are in Christ will live.

However, I don’t think Adam is the only foundational human being capable of being utilized in the christological enterprise. Another monumental figure among our “older siblings” is a man named Lamech. His story is told in Genesis 4 – he hails from the line of Cain (the first murderer), is the first polygamous man in Scripture, and intensifies the violence of Cain. His story ends with this poetic brag:

“Lamech said to his wives:
‘Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
  you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
  a young man for striking me.
If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold,
  then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.'”

Lamech’s song is the song of human history. Our world is a world of glorified violence, a moral ghetto where revenge is trusted above all else.  If there is one non-negotiable creed in our blood-stained culture, it’s the myth of redemptive violence.

In a world like ours, Christ appears as a kind of “second-Lamech.” While our older brother Lamech forged the path of vengeance on which we slavishly walk, our even older brother, Christ, has charted a new path of Kingdom peace and forgiveness.

Interestingly, Jesus explicitly alludes to Lamech’s infamous speech after an inquiry into the number of times required to forgive one’s enemy: “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” As Richard Beck says poignantly, the Song of Lamech is not the Song of the Lamb.  One might also read Jesus’ statement in Luke 6:27-29 as a direct retort to Lamech’s lyrical boast: “But I say to you who hear, ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.'”

Vengeance came through Lamech, forgiveness has come through Christ.
Lamech brought glorified violence, Christ has brought peace.

All in Lamech will die, but all in Christ shall live.