Two radio programmes in the past week have got me thinking about the power of storytelling.
The first was Desert Island Discs featuring the Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler. He spoke about parts of songs being in his “scrapyard”, waiting for other parts to fit with them so he could turn them into a song.
I am not sure how you retain the fragments of ideas for sermons. Some people rely on memory, some scribble in notebooks, numerous post-it notes, or online filing systems.
When it comes to ideas for preaching, we should take the approach of the pork processing plant: “We use everything from the pig apart from the squeak!”
Knofler spoke about how he wrote the song Money for Nothing. He was in an electrical store in New York, where all of the televisions were tuned to the new media sensation MTV. Observing this, Knopfler overheard a conversation between of a group of delivery men.
Some of the phrases they used (that are far from PC today) were so compelling that he asked at the desk for a pen and paper to capture them for later. The song is a pastiche of the wit and wisdom of cynical New York delivery men.
The other radio programme was the morning service held in Edinburgh on the final day of the Paris Olympics. It focused on the life of one of the most famous Olympians from the 1924 Paris Games, Eric Liddell. Liddell’s life seems like a million years away from the razamataz of the present Olympic games.
Liddell reached a brand-new audience when David Puttnam made his 1981 film Chariots of Fire, which was based on the 1924 Olympics. Liddell was one of three British athletes whose stories are featured in the film.
In the service David Puttnam spoke about what drew him to the character of Liddell. It was Liddell’s determination and religious principles that made him such a distinctive character.
Contrary to what he had been told, Liddell was required to run in the final of the Men’s 100 metres on a Sunday. Due to his strong Christian convictions he was unwilling to surrender his principles for an attempt at a gold medal. As it happens, a place was found for Liddell to run on another day in the final of the 400 metres. Although this was not his strongest event Liddell won gold with a new world record of 47.6 seconds, beating the silver medallist by five metres.
Liddell died in 1945 after being in a Japanese internment camp since 1943. He taught the children and helped them organise hockey matches. One of the former pupils remembers that the children wanted to play hockey on a Sunday and asked Liddel to be the referee. He refused. The match ended in chaos, so the following Sunday Liddell did act as referee.
Liddell who refused to run on a Sunday for his own glory — was willing to referee a hockey game on a Sunday as a distraction for children in a Japanese internment camp.
Storytelling keeps such stories alive. Preacher: keep your preaching “scrapyard” well stocked and learn how to piece bits together to use stories to tell the greatest story ever told.
Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash
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