Telling Stories: Missouri friends

This past weekend I spent at the Missouri NYI Convention. I was the "speaker" and had a great time with them. Mona Downs is the District President and is doing a great job and the people there were so kind (special thanks to Charlie for carting me around a bit and taking me to dinner!). I love making new friends!

I told two stories, one on Friday and one on Saturday. Friday night I shared the story of Ephesus and talked about how the Greeks valued beauty, performance, competition and achievement (which thankfully is nothing like our culture today). I went on to talk about that as the context of Paul's letter and shared some from there.

Saturday I told the story of Zaccheus. I pulled out the back story of who tax collectors were and how they were treated, etc.

Okay, so now here's my point, I told these stories and after each service people came up to me and started talking about how they found themselves IN the story. They related to someone in the story. They felt at home, sometimes even uncomfortable home. There wasn't 3 points and a power truth. Just the story from Scripture and our story, which as I think about it, is THE STORY.