Whenever I have an opportunity to teach, I gravitate toward passages of lament. Maybe it’s because I spent too much time listening to fashionably sad music in the 1990s. Whatever the case, it’s the psalms of lament that capture my attention. The cries of “How long, O Lord?” sometimes speak to my heart more deeply than the shouts of...

Check out this statistic from Maxine Bersch: It has been said that sixty-five percent of the story is carried out by nonverbal means. Only thirty-five percent of the meaning is conveyed by the words! — Maxine Bersch, Storytelling in a Nutshell: A Primer for Storytellers in Christian Education (Genevox Music, 1998), 101. Think about that for a moment! For most of...

My wife’s brother recently bought a headset that allows him to slide his smartphone into it to experience virtual reality environments and games using apps on the phone. He was over at our house the other day so I slid on the headset to try it out. In a split second, I was fully immersed into a music video where...

Wrath is not necessarily a bad thing. Think about it. In any epic, the good guys win precisely because they have poured out wrath on the bad guys. That’s part of telling a good story. The hero is victorious and the enemy is defeated. Good wins. Evil loses. Throughout the story of the Bible and of history, God, the...

Let’s talk about it up front and get it over with. If we want to tell Bible stories well—if we want to communicate the beauty and power of the gospel in engaging ways—it takes work. So, yes, your prep time will increase as you learn the art of storytelling. But remember that your kids are worth the extra effort!...

We’ve all been there. Perhaps it was a lecture. Or a conversation on a plane. Or perhaps it was even… gulp… at church. That’s right. I’m talking about listening to a real bore. You know, the person who made you struggle to stay engaged—perhaps even to stay awake. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to...