Tell them a story.
There is a limit to the telling of stories. No astronaut would like it if those setting the trajectory for a launch into space contrived to do it by reciting Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Stories, like most things in life, have their place. Yet, as C. S. Lewis once observed, "Sometimes story says best what must be said." Stories can get past "watchful dragons"; that is, they can penetrate the resistance put up by rationalized bad behavior; they can pierce the heart and gain a hearing even when ears might otherwise be dull. As Christine Dillon points out in Telling the Gospel Through Story: Evangelism That Keeps Hearers Wanting More (InterVarsity), storytelling is how Jesus most frequently proclaimed the gospel. All who look to Jesus to learn how to share the gospel and announce the kingdom of God would do well to adopt the storytelling approach.
Dillon's background and experience in both Western and non-Western environments led her to a method of communicating the gospel by unashamedly proclaiming the true story of the Bible. That Dillon learned "storying" within a missionary context, where others often had no biblical background whatsoever, makes her book all the more relevant in the West, where the biblical narrative seems, in many quarters, to be nearly forgotten. Read more
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