Storytelling has been around since the beginning of time. Can you just picture Adam and Eve sitting around and telling God about their day and the adventures they had in the Garden of Eden? It is how we connect the past to the present, keeping the details of history alive into the future. Word pictures, intricately woven with descriptive words and phrases bring to life the events of the past, the details of a missed occasion or an object lesson to teach a child. "Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." Robert McAfee Brown "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." Hannah Arendt Jesus is a great example of a masterful storyteller. Although all his stories were not based on an actual event, they were not fiction. There was nothing but truth in them. What skill! You now have the opportunity to become a great storyteller. Here are some tips to help you make the most of each parable and each class.

Matthew Gorkos begins The Storied Church with this compelling statement: "I believe in the church--in the power of faithful people serving a good and gracious God--and I believe in the power of a good story. Moreover, I believe, as this book will argue, that church and story--harnessed together--could be an even more powerful force for goodness in our world." Neuroscientists, anthropologists, archeologists, and psychologists all agree. Story is how our brains and our communities make sense of things. Storytelling helps us cope with change and loss. Storytelling helps us transmit lessons and life-skills to the next generation. As human beings, it seems we can't do without story. This book--indeed, this whole idea of story-centered church renewal--was born of a suspicion that the restorative, transformative, life-giving function that stories have for us as individuals may serve communities of faithful people as well. If stories help us survive as human creatures, why can't they help churches survive? The problem that story-centered renewal seeks to remedy has only become more prevalent and urgent in the age of Covid-19. Our churches need hope now more than ever. Writing from a pastor's perspective, Gorkos hopes to encourage and empower other pastors and lay leaders with both the hope and the tools they need to effect revitalizing change in their faith communities. Each chapter includes questions for reflection to help readers listen to and tell the stories that will lead to renewal and transformation.

Born in a barn, raised in a ghetto, a common laborer by trade, he spoke in obscurity, yet what did Jesus of Nazareth do to become the most quoted person in history? What would we learn if we were to evaluate Jesus' communication style in the 21st Century? Talk Like Jesus explores the techniques of the Master Communicator through the eyes of a media expert. Jesus' communication patterns are introduced with the "S.I.M.P.L.E." method, which is based on six steps: Stories, Interaction, Multi-Track Communication, Preparation, Love, Execution. With careful analysis, historical reference, humorous storytelling and even sci-fi analogies, this book challenges the reader with new communication paradigms and practical suggestions. Whether you're a high-profile CEO, salesperson, manager, teacher, parent or pastor, these time-tested methods will inspire you to improve your professional and personal communication skills by learning how to Talk Like Jesus. Book jacket.

This innovative book helps pastors and teachers enhance their teaching with original, audience appropriate stories--the way Jesus did! Bruce Seymour explains how such stories work, when to use them, and how to create them.

When the words great homily come to mind, the name Bill Bausch inevitably pops up. Here he offers 100 new homilies, reflecting the liturgical year, holy days and holidays, and saying farewell to loved ones. All are shaped and finessed with stories. As Bausch himself says, We never exhaust the meaning of a good story. Truth wrapped in story is irresistibleand thats why I use stories. These homilies are irresistible as well!

In How Far is Heaven? Ronnie McBrayer explores the "kingdom parables of Jesus" and finds in them an urgent challenge for Christians to reassess the gospel they believe and the role their professed faith plays in the world today. He argues that the gospel cannot be reduced to apocalyptical escapism, whereby the true believers will one day be rescued from the sufferings of planet Earth; nor can faith be used as a type of benefits program, providing the individual with the privileged comfort of membership.

Will help those who Break open the Word in RCIA and those involved in Lectionary-based faith sharing or Bible study groups to hear the Word as a living Word and to know that the Word they are hearing is compatible with what the biblical authors are teaching.

Over the centuries, New Testament texts have often been read in ways that reflect and encourage anti-Semitism. For example, the parable of the "wicked husbandmen," who kill the son of their landlord in order to seize the land, has been used to blame the Jews for the death of Christ. Since the Holocaust, Christian scholars have increasingly recognized and rejected this inheritance. In Parables for Our Time Tania Oldenhage seeks to fashion a biblical hermeneutics that consciously works with memories of the Holocaust. New Testament scholars have not directly confronted the horror of Nazi crimes, Oldenhage argues, but their work has nonetheless been deeply affected by the events of the Holocaust. By placing twentieth-century biblical scholarship within its specific historical and cultural contexts, she is able to trace the process by which the Holocaust gradually moved into the collective consciousness of New Testament scholars, both in Germany and in the United States. Her focus is on the scholarly interpretation of the parables of Jesus. She sets the stage with the work of Wolfgang Harnisch who exemplifies the problems surrounding Holocaust remembrance in the Germany of the 1980s and 1990s. She then turns to Joachim Jeremias's eminent work on the parables, first published in 1947. Jeremias's anti-Jewish rhetoric, she argues, should be understood not only as a perpetuation of an age-old interpretive pattern, but as representative of German difficulties in responding to the Holocaust immediately after the war. Oldenhage goes on to explore the way in which Jeremias's approach was challenged by biblical scholars in the U.S. during the 1970s. In particular, she examines the turn to literature and literary theory exemplified in the works of John Dominic Crossan and Paul Ricoeur. Nazi atrocities became part of the cultural reservoir from which Crossan and Ricoeur drew, she shows, although they never engaged with the historical facts of the Holocaust. In conclusion, Oldenhage offers her own reading of the parable of the wicked husbandmen, demonstrating how the turn from historical to literary criticism opens up the text to interpretation in light of the Holocaust. If the parables are to be meaningful in our time, she contends, we must take account of the troubling resonances between these ancient Christian stories and the atrocities of Auschwitz.

Find the beautiful and come alive. We are all frittering away our lives—at least according to someone. They tell us to be productive and not waste our opportunities. In Ancient Extravagance, Ryan Snider shows us that life is more than our accomplishments and what we do. The key to a life of meaning is developing our spiritual senses, which only come awake when we worship with others. That might seem like a waste of time, but in fact, these ancient practices have the power to wake up all parts of our lives—not just Sunday morning. Snider begins with a recovery of childlike wonder and story, reclaiming how prose, poetry, memory, and reflection heal and strengthen the soul. Next, he turns to melodies our grandmothers taught us, examining how they reach into our bones. He then reflects on what it means to eat meals with strangers and how a simple act of hospitality can gently inscribe love, generosity, gratitude, and hospitality in our hearts. These seemingly insignificant practices are mustard seeds that grow into trees to create shade for the world. When we cease simply going to worship and start becoming the worship, we will discover the friendships, beauty, purpose, stories, and sacred moments that will save us and make us more human. Deeply meaningful and delightfully humorous, candid yet surprising, Ancient Extravagance will connect you with a more beautiful and meaningful life.

This collection of essays by distinguished authors explores the present-day field of theological aesthetics: from von Balthasar’s contribution and parallel developments to correctives and alternatives to his approach. A tribute to von Balthasar’s own project expands into a dialogue with ancient and medieval traditions in search of revelatory aesthetics. The contributors outline challenges to his approach (including Protestant perspectives) and introduce new ways of viewing the field of theological aesthetics, which ultimately opens up to the idea of concrete cultural contexts and practical human needs determining the use of the arts and aesthetic sensibilities in theology.