Andy LePeau on Stories

Writing non-fiction (or speaking, teaching or preaching) doesn’t mean you can’t build in drama. Including stories as illustrations is always good, but there’s more to it than just telling the tale.

Here are a few options to keep your audience with you every word of the way.

Start with the first half of a story and leave it hanging. Then transition to your main points. At the end of the chapter, article or talk, tell the rest of the story you began with. Holding the end of the story in suspense builds drama and keeps interest.

Loop back to the beginning. Even if you tell all or most of a story at the beginning, go back to that story you opened with and tie it together as part of your conclusion.

Use in medias res. This Latin phrase (“into the middle of things”) refers to starting in the middle of a story--often a very dramatic moment, such as right before a championship game or when the doctor is about to give a diagnosis. But at this point in the tale, the key is to not give the resolution. Rather, stop and go back to the beginning of the story to explain how things got to this midpoint. When you get back to that part of the story (where you started), you can finish it from that point or do so later.

Tell a story within a story. I once went to the funeral of a Jewish friend (the story) at which the Cantor told a story from the Talmud about a man going to meet the king (the story within the story). It was a very interesting parable in itself, but explaining the context of the story and my reaction to it has made for heightened interest for my audience.

Tell the story of how you learned something. Rather than just relate flat information, ideas or tips to your audience, tell them the story of how you learned this material. Discuss the questions you had, how you searched, the problems you faced in coming to these conclusions, the mentor you had, the mistakes you made, the conversation that opened your eyes, and so forth. Lee Strobel has used this technique to good effect in The Case for Christ.

Raise a problem. Make people feel the problem. Don’t build a straw man that’s easy to knock down. Don’t telegraph the solution. Instead show the real difficulties involved. This makes your audience feel the tension, yearn for an answer and keeps them reading (or listening) till you offer it. Each chapter of Deep Church by Jim Belcher does this effectively.

Viola on Motives

In Revise Us Again, I dedicate an entire chapter to a phenomenon I call “being captured by the same spirit you oppose.” This is something that every Christian is susceptible to.

One of the characteristics of those who are captured by the same spirit is that such people tend to impute the motives of their own hearts onto those who threaten them.

Christian leaders who have inflated egos or deep insecurities are easily threatened by others. As a result, they will unwittingly read their own heart motives into the hearts of other people. Psychologists call this “projection.” I can’t face my own shortcomings and defects so I unconsciously project them onto other people. I accuse others of the very same dark things that are lurking deep within my own heart.

I’ve watched some Christians engage in projection when they came into contact with those who were just as (or more) gifted than they were. The root is often jealousy. You can call it a “Saul complex,” if you will.

Herein lies a great lesson: Those who judge the motives of others are simply revealing what’s in their own hearts. In Matthew 7:1–4, Jesus points out that those with defective eyesight are all too willing to perform eye surgery on others. Yet within this text, the Lord makes this chilling assessment: If you impute an evil motive onto someone else, you’re simply making known what your motives are.

To put it another way, the piece of sawdust we see in our brother’s eye is simply a small chip off the two-by-four that lies within our own. And a piece of wood will always distort our vision. When people cannot face the reality of what’s in their own hearts, they project it onto others—particularly those who they find threatening to their egos.

One of the most profound influences in my life was a talk radio show host from many years back. When this man first broke into the talk radio business, he sat at the feet of a man whom he idolized. He was this talk radio show host’s mentor. We’ll call the mentor “Nelson” since I don’t wish to disclose his name.

When Nelson discovered that the man who he had mentored began to surpass him in popularity, all hell broke loose. Nelson’s monstrous ego began to flicker, and he was loaded for bear. He launched the first salvo, and the two men waged an on-the-air radio slap fight that marched off the map of dignity.

Pointed insults were swapped. Disparaging remarks were cast. Both men drew blood from one another, and the listeners got caught up in the carnage. It turned out to devolve into something quite vicious, and the exchange deeply hurt my radio friend.

Unfortunately, no one could reel in the egos or squash the infighting. It turned into bad blood. Nelson was radioactive for quite some time, and the two men didn’t speak a civil word to each other for many years.

What happened to these two men is not an isolated incident. I’ve watched it occur numerous times since I’ve been a Christian.

King Saul is not the only gifted man who has been threatened by a younger David. What was at the root of that painful period in David’s life? Jealousy and envy in the heart of Saul and the threatening feeling

(as well as the irrational paranoia) that comes with them.

As they danced, they sang: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” Saul was very angry; this refrain galled him. “They have credited David with tens of thousands,” he thought, “but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?” (1 Sam. 18:7–8)

Incidentally, jealousy and envy are what provoked the religious leaders of our Lord’s day to put Him to death. Tragically, this same drama has played out since Cain slew his younger brother out of jealousy.

I’m no fan of Sigmund Freud nor of his theory of the Oedipus complex. (Please reread that last sentence.) But what led Freud to construct his oedipal theory was a legitimate observation about human nature. Namely, Freud observed that some fathers and some father figures become threatened by their own sons. That is, they fear being supplanted by their sons, and so they grow to hate them.

This only happens when there’s an excessive root of pride and insecurity in the father figure’s heart. The absence of such pride and insecurity is what separates those spiritual fathers who become proud of their sons from those who grow to despise them.

Regrettably, some mentors suffer from both an inferiority complex and a superiority complex at the same time. Their shaky sense of identity cuts in both directions. In such cases, they become masters at the fine art of denial.

Caution: If you’re a person who will one day mentor others, I have a sobering warning. If your ego hasn’t been annihilated by the cross of Jesus Christ, you will end up becoming a Saul in the lives of those who are just as (or more) gifted than you are. And when God begins to elevate them in His service, you will go insane.

You’ll become another sad example of lions eating their young. And as with every modern Saul, God’s favor and anointing will leave you and be given to another. As Peter said, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. (1 Peter 5:5 NKJV)

Saint John of the Cross warned Christians to be very careful whom they chose to be their mentors, for, in his words, “as the master so is the disciple; as the father so the child.”

To my mind, one cannot show genuine respect for one’s mentor by perpetuating his shortcomings and flaws. Every father should be extremely proud of the son who surpasses him. True mentors freely give what they have to their spiritual sons and hope that their sons will exceed them. False mentors use their sons to increase their fame and carry on their legacies, and they become infuriated whenever their sons share their glory.

The Lord give us abundant grace so that we will not be captured by the same spirit we oppose

Wesley on Reading and Preaching

ere is John Wesley writing to John Trembath (August 17, 1760), a young minister who was a poor preacher:

What has exceedingly hurt you in time past, nay, and I fear, to this day, is lack of reading.

I scarce ever knew a preacher who read so little.

And perhaps, by neglecting it, you have lost the taste for it.

Hence your talent in preaching does not increase. It is just the same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep; there is little variety; there is no compass of thought.

Reading only can supply this, with meditation and daily prayer.

You wrong yourself greatly by omitting this.

You can never be a deep preacher without it, any more than a thorough Christian.

Oh begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercise. You may acquire the taste which you have not; what is tedious at first will afterward be pleasant.

Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily.

It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a pretty, superficial preacher.

Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow.

Do not starve yourself any longer.

Take up your cross and be a Christian altogether.

Then will all the children of God rejoice (not grieve) over you, and in particular yours.

Packer on the Gospels

Finally, we could then correct the wooliness of view as to what Christian commitment involves, by stressing the need for constant meditation on the four gospels, over and above the rest of our Bible reading; for gospel study enables us both to keep our Lord in clear view and to hold before our minds the relational frame of discipleship to him. The doctrines on which our discipleship rests are clearest in the epistles, but the nature of discipleship itself is most vividly portrayed in the gospels. Some Christians seem to prefer the epistles to the gospels and talk of graduating from the gospels to the epistles as if this were a mark of growing up spiritually; but really this attitude is a very bad sign, suggesting that we are more interested in theological notions than in fellowship with the Lord Jesus in person. We should think, rather, of the theology of the epistles as preparing us to understand better the disciple relationship with Christ that is set forth in the gospels, and we should never let ourselves forget that the four gospels are, as has often and rightly been said, the most wonderful books on earth.

Calvin on Christ our Victor

Finally, since as God only he could not suffer, and as man only could not overcome death, he united the human nature with the divine, that he might subject the weakness of the one to death as an expiation of sin, and by the power of the other, maintaining a struggle with death, might gain us the victory … But special attention must be paid to what I lately explained, namely, that a common nature is the pledge of our union with the Son of God; that, clothed with our flesh, he warred to death with sin that he might be our triumphant conqueror.

MLJ on Sin and Sinners

You will never make yourself feel that you are a sinner, because there is a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation. We are all on very good terms with ourselves, and we can always put up a good case for ourselves. Even if we try to make ourselves feel that we are sinners, we will never do it. There is only one way to know that we are sinners, and that is to have some dim, glimmering conception of God.