The Magic is in the Story

Have you ever seen a bad magician? Recently I sat through a magic show that was absolutely horrendous. The magician stumbled from trick to trick, performing over thirty magic tricks in a twenty-five minute show. None of the tricks were bad in and of themselves, but put together in his show, they failed to entertain.

He made a mistake that is common among amateur magicians. Instead of focusing on being an entertainer, he concentrated on the mechanics of the trick.

Many preachers make a similar mistake. They get so caught up in the mechanics of theology that they forget to make the message captivating. They say things like:

- In the original Greek, this word means…

- Let me give you a list of twenty verses that prove this point…

My thesis is that every good message must be centered around a story. The magic is not in the content, the magic is in how you relate the content to real life.

When people discover truth in a story they do not argue with it because it is their discovery.