“You used to be awesome and tell funny stories about dumb things you did. You don’t do that anymore.”One of the fifth graders at our church shared this little bit of encouragement with me as he headed out the door the other week.
He meant it as an insult. I see it, oddly, as a compliment.
A few months back, I started sharing a few stories of really foolish things I did when I was between 8 and 10 years old. Things like: jumping off a roof to see if a man (or, in this case, boy) could fly. Defying my mother and getting an ATM card for my bank account after she explicitly told me not to. Or finding all the Christmas presents during a sick day, opening and playing with them all, and then attempting to cover my tracks by “rewrapping”all the presents.
Y’know, the typical idiotic stuff you can expect an eight-year-old boy to do.
The kids all enjoyed these stories, which is great, but then I ran into a couple of problems:
- The stories I could think of were inappropriate for kids (most of my childhood stories are PG-13 and up).
- The stories I could think of were inappropriate for the lesson being taught.
The second is far more significant an issue than the first. Although some of the stories I could share make me wonder how I’m not regularly in therapy, there are some I can clean up a little to make slightly more appropriate for little ears. But when a story doesn’t connect with the meat of the lesson, I don’t feel right about using it.
Telling stories that way—telling a story just to get a laugh—puts the focus on the wrong thing: me. While I obviously want to do all I can to make what I’m saying relatable and interesting, I don’t want to put me at the center of the teaching time for the sake of a quick laugh.
I’d rather be accused of being boring because I’m not telling funny stories, if it means the kids get to hear the gospel.
But the kid who was upset that I’m not telling as many funny stories doesn’t understand that. At least, he doesn’t understand it yet. He doesn’t get that it’s more important for him to know what God’s Word says than hear about something dumb I did when I was a kid. Someday he might. And if it ever happens, I hope he’ll be thankful that I sometimes sacrificed telling stories for the sake of telling him the truth about Jesus.
Originally posted at jtcochran.com. Photo credit: amanky via photopin cc
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I can understand a child commenting like this. The problem is that there are far too many adults in church for whom jokes and entertaining stories have to be the focal point.
Good on ya for helping them see that it’s all about Jesus! :0)
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