Guest Outpost blog by Charlie Lee
Story time
I am a father to two young children. As any parent can tell you, raising children is both the most challenging and the most rewarding endeavor. Our days begin early as my wife and I both jump out of bed and rush to get breakfast ready, school lunches packed and our two kids dressed and out the door in time to get to school. Our afternoons are often filled with carpools, soccer practices or getting our little ones to dance or guitar lessons. The evening is often busy as we do our best to cook a good meal, sit down as a family to eat and then get the kids ready for bed. However, after all the rushing around is done comes my favorite part of the day. My wife and I get to sit still with our children in their bedrooms, pull a book from one of their bookshelves and tell a story.
The stories we tell
Storytelling is not just a fun activity for children. It is also an essential skill for church leaders.  Whether you are a teaching elder in a large congregation or a lay leader of a small group, it is crucial that you pay attention to the stories you tell. All of us, whether we are in leadership positions or not, tell stories everyday as we interact with those in our congregations. If we are constantly busy and frantic in our activities, then we may be telling a story to those in our congregation that we don’t have time for them or that the success of our programs are more important than our people. If we don’t work towards mission efforts that reach outside the walls of our church building, then we are telling a story that the goal of our church is to simply take care of members and maintain an institution rather than act as an expression of the gospel in our communities.
Choose the right story
While it is understandable that we will certainly get too busy from time to time and that we can’t ignore the task of institutional maintenance altogether, it is crucial that we don’t lose sight of the fact that we as church leaders are always telling a story. Our task is to use our position as “storytellers” to tell the right story. A story that empowers the members of our congregations. A story that calls them deeper into community with each other. A story that draws them into deeper discipleship with God.
Destination postcard
I have found a helpful metaphor for this process in a book by Chip and Dan Heath called “Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.” They argue that in order to enable individuals to accomplish a common goal, we as leaders must share with them a “destination postcard.” We must tell a story, set the scene, describe for them the place where we feel God is leading us. It is not so important that we know exactly how we will arrive at that destination, but that we can clearly communicate a sense of urgency and movement to that new destination.
Capture the imagination
Those stories that I tell my children before bed each night do a wonderful job of capturing the imagination of both parent and child. Sometimes I can’t stop reading them even when bedtime has arrived because they are communicating such a good story. That is our job as church leaders, to tell stories of God’s vision for our communities that capture the imagination, so that our congregations might be motivated to make the journey.
What “story” are you telling your congregation? What stories need to be told? What story might God be writing for your congregation?
Charlie Lee is associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, North Carolina.
