An important part of communicating is learning how to tell an effective story. Storytelling is a powerful tool, one that even Jesus used through his parables and the gospels. In this episode, we’ll talk about how to tell a story well at a crusade, and how to use it as a tool to be more effective in your evangelism.
Transcript:
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:00):
An important part of communicating is learning how to tell an effective story. Storytelling is a powerful tool, one that even Jesus used through his parables and the gospels. In this episode, we’ll talk about how to tell a story well at a crusade, and how to use it as a tool to be more effective in your evangelism.
Evangelism Podcast Announcer (00:29):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist, Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:53):
Alright, let’s go to the next session here. How to tell a story. I think this is an important part of communicating is learning how to tell a story. In our culture. In the Western culture we tend to think in terms of lists. So you’ll have like a, B, C, 1, 2, 3. But in many other cultures around the world people communicate more through stories than what we do in our culture. The western culture is designed to be ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba like that. But in other cultures, you tell a story, let people discover truth in the story. And you’ll notice that in the Bible. Jesus frequently told stories. He says, there was a farmer who went down to his field. The he’ll talk about the birds of the air. He, he says, there was a man who went on a long journey.
(01:57):
Jesus was always telling stories. And so I think stories are an effective way to communicate the gospel. And Jesus didn’t even always explain the meaning of his stories. Sometimes his disciples had a quorum, says, what does that mean? And Jesus would explain to the disciples, but tells the story and let people figure it out. And so I, one time I, I saw a magician, and the magician just loved doing all of his tricks and everything. And, and like he did a 20 minute show, and he probably did like a hundred tricks in that 20 minute show. He was pulling handkerchiefs out of everywhere and, and everything. And he did lots of amazing things in his show, but it was nothing he did was very memorable. Then I saw another magician, and this magician did just one trick, but he kind of told a funny story with it.
(02:44):
He had everyone in the audience laughing and, and stuff. And even though the trick that he did was very simple, people remembered it and loved it because of the story that this magician told. And so the magician who did like the hundred tricks he did, what sometimes preachers do, sometimes preachers go and they’ll say, you know, this Greek verse means that, and that Greek word means that. And let me tell you what this commentary says. And you know, they’re so impressed with all the knowledge that they have, and they’re trying to impress the audience that they forget that the goal is to communicate the gospel to people, to, to, to, and, and to get it down into their heart. And stories are an effective way to do that. So here’s some keys to telling a story. I know the story. Don’t read the story. Know the story.
(03:34):
Give your story a good introduction. Give the story some good narration. Use dialogue pause and pace. Use sound effects when telling the story. Involve your audience in the telling of the story. And then make a, a great application with the story. And a specific story with details is more powerful than just a general story. And, and so if I’m sharing a healing testimony, I will turn it into a story. One time I went to Ethiopia, it’s about 30% Muslim, but the part of the country that we were in had a higher percentage of Muslims than that. And so as we were going out into the neighborhoods and we were putting up posters and, and banners for the crusade, there was a group of young Muslims who came and they were tearing down the, the posters. And then they actually started a riot and they threw a brick through the front windshield of our publicity vehicle.
(04:33):
And the police were called. And they said that our team had started the riot. And so 17 of our Ethiopian team members were thrown into jail, and we had to get a lawyer to, to get him out the next day. And so the first night of the crusade there, there weren’t very many people there because nobody knew about what was happening because all the posters and the banners had been torn down. But I said, God, you have to do something there. This crusade is gonna be a failure because nobody knows about it. And so the second night, there was a man, his name was Mohammed, and Mohammed was a cripple. He had a cane, and he dragged his leg like this, and he would walk with his leg through the city, and he was known for going and asking people for money. He would always stand right on the main street there.
(05:20):
And he would drag his leg, go up to the cars, ask people for money, go door to door. And so he was known all throughout the city. And that night, as we preached and said, Jesus wants to heal you, Jesus touched mohammad’s leg. And he began to move it. And he took his cane and held it up in the air. And he took a small step. Then he took another step, and he started running back and forth. And he started saying, Jesus, he healed me. Jesus healed me. And he came running up on the platform holding his cane up in the air and said, Jesus healed me. And we said, what’s your name? He said, my name is Muhammad. And everyone in the crowd knew that he was a Muslim. And so word began to spread that Jesus was healing Muslims. And so the next night, the crowd size doubled, and then the next night it doubled again.
(06:04):
Then the next night it doubled again. And by the last night of that festival, we had over 50,000 people, many of the Muslim coming to hear about Jesus for the first time. Why? Because Jesus had touched Mohammad. Yeah, the cripple. And so I’ll, I’ll tell a story about how Jesus healed someone in another country or in a, you know, from last night, and then say, Jesus wants to do the same thing for you. Yeah. And so rather than just saying I’ve seen thousands of people saved and healed, I’ll tell the story of one individual. Jesus changed that individual’s life and that individual because his life was changed. It gives people hope to believe for their life to be changed. And so it’s far more powerful to share specific stories, specific details, that it is to say these, these big general statements. People, when they discover the truth in the story, they don’t argue with it because it’s their discovery.
(07:05):
And so there, there’s a story about Reinhard Bonky. One time he was on television and they asked him, brother Bonky, do you think women should be allowed to preach? And he could have gone into a long theological discussion about that, but I think he just said, correct me my story. But he just said, if I was drowning, I would not care if it was a man or a woman who threw me a life preserver. That’s right. Now that’s a one line story. There’s details in it. You have a picture of a guy in the water drowning, going down for the third time in a man or a woman on a boat holding a life preserver, trying to, that’s a one line story. And with that story, nothing more needs to be said. That’s good. And people, you, how, how can you argue with that? I mean, you know, you could have given a long theological explanation like, well, you know, maybe women can God can use women.
(08:04):
I don’t know. But there’s the possibility. No, just a simple one line story. Boom. It created truth that people could understand. And so I, I noticed that later on here brother Kalinda included some stories and these are great stories that, that you found to, to include. And one of them is about a little boy who has a boat. So let me tell you how I would tell the story of the boy with a boat. Once upon a time, there was a little boy named John, and John had a pocket knife, and he loved a carve wood. And one day he decided, I’m gonna make a boat with my pocket knife. So he went, found a beautiful piece of wood, began to carve that wood with a pocket knife until he had carved a beautiful little boat. He found some paint, and he very carefully painted the boat, bright blue with red little windows, put a sail on the boat, and that was his prized possession.
(09:04):
He would take that little boat down to the river and every day he would play with the boat in the river. He would put the boat up at the top of the little stream and it would go down, avoiding the rocks. But one day when he was out there, it had rained the night before and the river was a little bit higher than it normally was. And so the boat, instead of coming back to shore, it kept going and the boat was lost. And he cried. He loved his little boat. He had made it with his own hands. And here the boat has lost. And he was so sad because he’d lost his boat. A couple of weeks later, he was in town and he walked by a store and he noticed in the window of the store was a boat. And he looked at it, it looked just like his boat.
(09:52):
It was a little bit dinged up and, and banged and some of the paint come off. But he looked at it and he recognized that was his boat. And so he ran into the store and, and found the store owner and said, Mr, Mr, you found my boat. And the guy says, well, I bought this boat from someone who brought it in. And the little boy says, can I have my boat back? He says, yes, I’ll be happy to give you your boat back if you pay me the money that I’m charging. And so the little boy, he was so sad cuz he had no money. And so he said, how am I going to get $5 in order to buy back my boat? I made that boat, now I have to buy it back. So he went and began to work. He found chores. He knocked on his neighbor’s door and says, can I sweep your yard? And he worked very hard until he had saved up his $5. Then he ran back to the store and he says, now can I buy back my boat? And the store owner says, here you go. Here’s your boat. And he looked at it and all the paint had come off. So he very carefully repainted it until it was in perfect condition once again.
(11:04):
In the same way that little John had this boat. It’s just like how God created. You See, John made this boat. Well, God made you. John loved his boat. God loves you. God loves you so much. He wants to have spent time with you. And just as this little boat went down the river and John went and spent time with his boat, that’s what God wants to do with you. But we became lost because of sin. Sin was like this mighty rushing river that took the boat away. And we became lost. And God was so sad because he doesn’t want us to be lost. He wants us to be found. But then Jesus found us again and he paid a high price. He shed his blood to us back. And when he bought us back, he found that we are broken in some ways. But just as John took out his little paintbrush and fixed the boat, now Jesus wants to fix you.
(12:04):
He wants to heal your body. Now look at that sermon. What did TL Osborne say are the four things you need to have in every message. God’s creation, Satan’s deception, Christ substitution, or redemption. You can preach all four of those points from the story of the little boat. All four of those boats are there in that story. All four of those points are there in that story about the boat. And, and so by sharing that story, you kind of capture people’s attention. They wanna know what, what did John have? And then you can take the story and you can apply it to their lives and, and turn it into a gospel illustration.
School of Evangelism Ad (12:47):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you wanna lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations, and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you wanna be an evangelist, but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.
Daniel King (13:49):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but God puts it on your heart to do more. Of course you can do more, but please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Announcer (15:09):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
