When a Story Is the Best Response...Continued from page 3

Preach a good sermon:  +2 chips

Preach a bad sermon:  -8 chips

Visit a sick person in the hospital:  +7 chips

Sick person dies (was expected to recover):  -10 chips

Sick person recovers (was expected to die):  +40 chips

Bring cookies to monthly board meeting:  +2 chips

Lose temper and shout at monthly board meeting:  -25 chips

This is just a sampling. The entire catalog is very large.

A friend of mine was called to pastor a conservative Midwestern church. He arrived a few weeks early to get settled before his first Sunday. On the Sunday before his first Sunday, he gave away the pulpit to another congre­gation (without asking permission). That cost him 2,000 chips, which meant that if he preached 1,000 consecutive good sermons (which would take roughly twenty years) he would be back to zero. He was done. He didn't have enough chips to survive.

In contrast, another pastor friend of mine forgot a fu­neral. While the family was waiting for him at the local funeral home, he was eating lunch with another parish­ioner at a local restaurant. The funeral director called the church office, but the secretary couldn't find him. (He had chosen that day to try a new restaurant.) The funeral director started down the church listings in the yellow pages until he found a willing cleric from some alien denomination who didn't know the deceased and didn't do a very good job. When my friend realized what he had done, he immediately drove to the family home to apolo­gize (by then the deceased had already been buried). The family spokesperson said they would never forgive him. This whole story cost him about 30,000 chips. But he had been the pastor of that church for about 40 years and had millions of chips in storage.

As you can see, it takes a lot of work to accumulate enough chips to be trusted and followed.⁴

The wonderful thing about this extended metaphor is that it continues to provoke beneficial insight into the role of a pastor and provides practical guidance on how to make good choices. A leader begins to evaluate every situation he or she faces in terms of whether chips will be won or lost.

Stories Provide Key Insights

Stories often provide key insights. A story allows the listener to step out of his or her usual frame of reference and see something new. In a sense, all of Jesus' parables provide key insights, but some seem to do it in especially pointed ways. Here are parables Jesus told to provide insight:

The Divided Household (Matthew 12:25-26; Mark 3:23-26; Luke 11:17-18)

The Lost Son (Luke 15:11-32)

The Patched Garment (Matthew 9:16; Mark 2:21; Luke 5:36)

The Strong Man (Matthew 12:29)

Often the insight provided is intended to deepen our understanding of spiritual realities or show us something important about the heavenly Father.