Jesus

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.

A Simple Case for Christian Nonviolence

~ Mike Skinner ~ 6 Comments

[1] Jesus’ Direct Teaching

“Nonviolent resistance” might be a more accurate term for Jesus’ teachings: he commands a “third way” between doing nothing and responding to violence with violence, namely, returning evil with good; resisting with love.

  • Jesus clearly expects his followers to live nonviolently – rebuking them on many occasions where they stray from this expectation:
    Luke 9:51-56
    Luke 22:47-51

[2] Jesus’ Explicit Example

  • As the Incarnate God, Jesus’ nonviolent historical life is both: 

[3] Overall Narrative of the Bible – From Old Testament to the Kingdom of God

Despite the (divine and human) violence in the Old Testament, there is a promise of and clear trajectory towards a nonviolent community

  • Israel’s battles weren’t won with military prowess, but by simply obeying & trusting God
    Joshua 6:1-7
    Psalm 20:6-9
  • OT has clear promises of the Kingdom of God’s arrival calling God’s people to nonviolence
    Isaiah 2:1-5
    Micah 4:1-5

[4] The Early Church Thought It Was Obvious

  • The early church (from the time of Christ to the time of Constantine in the 4th century) was fully nonviolent. Here is a small sampling of quotes:

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD)
“We who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness, have each through the whole earth changed our warlike weapons—our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into implements of tillage—and we cultivate piety, righteousness, philanthropy, faith, and hope, which we have from the Father Himself through Him who was crucified.”

Tertullian (160-225 AD)
“Shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law?”
“If one attempt to provoke you by manual violence, the admonition of the Lord is at hand: To him,‟ He says, ‘who strikes you on the face, turn the other cheek also.’ Let outrageousness be wearied out by your patience.“
“Christ, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier…”
“And shall he apply the chain and the prison and the torture and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs?”
“Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law? And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs?”

Hippolytus (170-236 AD)
“The catechumen or faithful who wants to become a soldier is to be rejected, for he has despised God.”

Origen of Alexandria (185-254 AD)
“We have come in accordance with the counsel of Jesus to cut down our arrogant swords of argument into plowshares, and we convert into sickles the spears we formerly used in fighting. For we no longer take swords against a nation, nor do we learn anymore to make war, having become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus, who is our Lord.”

Marcellus (298 AD)
“I threw down my arms for it was not seemly that a Christian man, who renders military service to the Lord Christ, should render it by earthly injuries.” “It is not lawful for a Christian to bear arms for any earthly consideration.”

Martin of Tours (316-397)
“I am a soldier of  Christ. To fight is not permissible for me.”

Are We Unintentional Gnostics?

~ Mike Skinner ~ 6 Comments

*We might be Gnostic if:

  1. We find ourselves talking about heaven as an escape from this world, especially if we don’t need a resurrection of our bodies
  2. We think that a happy marriage (or other successful Christian goal) is achieved by attending a special seminar and learning the “secrets”
  3. We think that taking care of this world (ecology) is a waste of time because it is going to hell in a hand basket anyway
  4. We think that the goal is to know about Jesus rather than follow him
  5. We spend all of our time in the New Testament, ignoring the Old Testament

Do you agree that these are good litmus tests for whether Christians have been influenced by Gnosticism?
Do you think most churches in America are influenced by Gnosticism?

*quoted from Rediscovering Jesus: An Introduction to Biblical, Religious, and Cultural Perspectives on Christ, p. 171. See my complete review of the book here.

Book Review: Rediscovering Jesus by David B. Capes, Rodney Reeves, & E. Randolph Richards

~ Mike Skinner ~ 2 Comments

I recently read a new book from IVP Academic entitled “Rediscovering Jesus: An Introduction to Biblical, Religious, and Cultural Perspectives on Christ” by David B. Capes, Rodney Reeves, & E. Randolph Richards. 9780830824724Let me begin this review by putting my cards on the table: I am a fan of David B. Capes. He was my professor at Houston Baptist University and was also part of my master’s thesis defense panel. Thus, my original interest in reading the book was due simply to his participation in the project (plus, it’s hard to pass on a book with positive reviews from Michael Gorman, Nijay Gupta, and Scot McKnight). However, as I read the book I quickly forgot about my personal connection to one of the authors and found myself deeply engaged in a beautifully written, biblically sound, and theologically informed book on the person of Jesus.

The premise of the book is that we all have an idea of Jesus’ identity that is partially formed by many factors: different parts of Scripture, certain traditional teachings, and even our own personal biases. As the subtitle suggests, the authors attempt to introduce the reader to the various unique biblical, religious, and cultural perspectives of Jesus of Nazareth. The genius of this book is found in its three-fold structure for each perspective. First, they look at each book, religious, or cultural perspective as an individual work and ask “What does this picture of Jesus look like?” The explicit goal is to not let other texts or theological commitments influence the observation of the image of Jesus presented in these unique perspectives. Second, they expand on how each particular portrait of Jesus is different than other images of Jesus. Third, and perhaps most interestingly, they ask “Who would we say that Jesus is if this were the only picture of Jesus that we had?”

I found this third task to be the most illuminating part of the book. While I am committed to understanding Jesus both canonically and theologically, I have always believed that there is so much more to learn about Jesus if we would just let certain texts stand by themselves first, before we try to make a composite image of the person and work of Jesus.

The book is divided into two parts: Jesus in the Bible (Mark’s Jesus, Matthew’s Jesus, Luke’s Jesus, John’s Jesus, Paul’s Jesus, The Priestly Jesus, The Jesus of Exiles, and The Apocalyptic Jesus) and Jesus outside the Bible (The Gnostic Jesus, The Muslim Jesus, the Historical Jesus, the Mormon Jesus, The American Jesus. and the Cinematic Jesus). Each chapter ends with a bibliography for further reading and a handful of discussion questions. The bibliographies are typically top-notch, but I found some of the discussion questions to be lacking.

Bottom line: there is a lot to like about this book. The treatment of the four Gospels is a fine example of excellent scholarship communicated at a popular level. However, as the authors got into the other New Testament literature, I sometimes felt as if they let a surface-level reading of the text overly emphasize differences between pictures of Jesus in the Gospels and other books. For Paul, I couldn’t avoid feeling that the authors sometimes let a simple reading of the text highlight differences that perhaps are not as significant as they first seem. (I would recommend Daniel Kirk’s “Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul?” as a resource that reconciles the apparent “differences” between the Pauline literature and the Gospels). I had the same feeling for their treatment of Jesus in Revelation, again thinking that they sometimes overplayed the difference between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of Revelation. To be fair, this is an explicit part of their project (highlighting certain differences), but I think the differences between the pictures of Jesus are still significant enough even with recognizing scholarship that undercuts some of the “apparent” different pictures of Jesus throughout the New Testament. Let me be clear, these criticisms are the result of an intentional attempt to find something lacking in this excellent work. The book is consistently engaging and always well-informed. I found the second part of the book just as fascinating and imagine that for many lay-people these would be the most impactful chapters. It is easy to disregard how much our view of Jesus has been influenced by American values and various forms of art.

I highly recommend this book for audiences of all sorts. I can see myself using it as a supplementary textbook to a course on Jesus or the Gospels. I can also see this material being implemented in a local ministry setting at a book study or Bible study. Do yourself a favor and go order a copy while I leave you with a short video of the three authors discussing their work:

Note: I received this book from IVP Academic in exchange for an unbiased review.