By Our culture is taking story-telling very seriously. For those of us in the West, a few square miles in California have dominated our imaginative skyline in, I think, an unprecendented way. And last night I was at an event where, rarely, the great John le Carré gave an address, and it reminded me of how, in the little space called spy stories, he has created not just one central figure, George Smiley, but an entire language for thinking about spying. Tradecraft. Circus. Joe. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. Tinker, Tailer. And dozens of meticulous characters, too – he namechecked Connie, and a murmer of appreciation ran round the room. She’s a gal.
As I’ve said before, everone loves a good story.
And those are just the explicit ones.
Advertisers know that to sell us something, they have to tell us something.
So the best preachers are really good tellers of the better story, and exposers of the cultural myths.
All of which is why I’m really pleased to be involved with planning The Evangelism Conference, with this year’s theme, A Better Story. If you’re in the UK, and you can make either the south or north venues, we’d love to see you there.
ministrynutsandbolts.com 
Last year I was on a bible storytelling workshop and I’m currently reading a book by the main facilitator, ‘Telling the Gospel Through Story’ by Christine Dillon, an OMF missionary in Taiwan. It’s a bit of a how-2 on how to tell Bible stories, which I’m finding stimulating. In my context in Japan where people have very little Bible background knowledge, I think it’s an excellent non-threatening way to get people familiar with God’s Word. I think it could work equally well in a Western post-christian context, where people might be resistant to a Bible study or any ‘organised religion’, but might enjoy listening to a story.
I really hope and pray that this conference serves to equip and enthuse the Church to share the better story in a more engaging, winsome way.
It was a great day. And round here people don’t know the story in depth any more so we are all start from scratch, all over again!