PhilJean.ca

I’ve been reading this book by Mark Miller entitled, Experiential Storytelling. It is about (Re)Discovering Narrative to Communicate God’s Message. It is honestly changing my entire view on preaching. I found this quote by a gentlemen named Kong Fu Tzu a.k.a Confucius and this is what he had to say. ” What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.” Young people, especially, nowadays want to feel something. Our society has become one of experiencing things. When you go to coffee shops, the $1 that you would normally spend on coffee now turns to $2, $3, $4 because you are not only paying for the coffee anymore; you are paying for the atmosphere that they’ve created with the rock music, the nice furniture or whatever other artsy creations that maybe displayed. Even the whole movie industry has caught on. People don’t seem to want to go watch regular movies at the theatre anymore, so they started to come out with all of these 3D movies in order to spike up the interest again and it is working. Due to the society in which we now live in, regular normal life and entertainment just doesn’t cut it anymore. It has to be more, more music, more colourful, more stuff, more interaction, more, more, more.

This is now the reality of the society in which we live in.  As teachers of the Word of God, we can either fight this or ride the wave. Personally I chose to ride the wave and to utilize this to reach to as many kids as possible. We need to realize that the world is changing and unless the church takes the time to realize these changes, we are going to lose our effectiveness. Mark Miller puts it this way: “Today’s Church leaders must see themselves as missionaries who are setting sail from the land of modernity to the uncharted waters of post-modernity, and the first rule of any missionary is to understand the language and culture of his or her community.”

Let’s be a people that effectively communicate the Greatest story ever recorded!