Category Archives: Mentoring

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How to Tell Symbolic Stories

Leaders who tell the gospel story and their personal life story are off to a great start with becoming impactful storytellers. But there’s one more story type that’s worth keeping in your back pocket: the symbolic story.

how to tell symbolic stories

Photo by Carter Canedy on Upslash

What’s a symbolic story? A symbolic story uses simple language to convey a complex point. A few examples of these are Jesus’s parables, personal word pictures, legends, or historical anecdotes. In a previous post, we looked at the way Nathan the prophet used a symbolic story to gently confront David about his sin. Using a symbolic story that represented David’s situation (rather than exposing it explicitly from the get-go) softened David’s heart and brought him to a place of repentance. Symbolic stories are powerful!

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3 Kinds of Stories that Leaders Should Tell

One of the best ways to reach people is through storytelling. Storytelling softens people’s hearts and makes space for transformation. In the last post, we talked about the why behind storytelling. Youth leaders tell stories because Jesus told stories, people remember stories, and creation is a story. But which stories should leaders tell? There are three kinds of storytelling leaders should learn: The Gospel story, symbolic stories, and life stories.

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Why Good Leaders Tell Stories

As a youth leader, are you ever scrambling for a natural way to introduce students to Jesus? How can we present Jesus to kids as the winsome, relatable Lord that he is?

why good leaders should tell stories

Leaders who understand the power of storytelling see transformation in the lives around them. By the end of this story series, I hope you’ll be able to practically use 3 specific kinds of storytelling in your ministry and witness their transformative power. To get there, we’ll unpack these 3 questions:

  1. Why youth leaders should tell stories
  2. Which stories to tell
  3. How to tell them

Let’s dive in! Why should youth leaders tell stories?

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DISCIPLESHIP FROM ROOT TO FRUIT | JOHN 15:1-17

A believer may pass through much affliction, and yet secure very little blessing from it all. Abiding in Christ is the secret of securing all that the Father meant the [discipline] to bring us.
 – Andrew Murray
It’s so easy to complicate discipleship in our age of information and to-do lists. Yet even if we might be complicating discipleship toward more “doing” than “being” in Christ, we can rest assured that Jesus will prune us to become fruitful again. If you feel scattered and distracted as I often do, maybe these words spoken by God to Ezekiel will bring you some comfort and nourishment to your discipleship this week:
And he said to me, ‘Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.’ Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey. – Ezekiel 3:3
discipleship root to fruit
It’s no wonder that what grounds us the most in our walk with God is simply to mediate (or eat in the case of Ezekiel) whole chunks of Scripture. Scripture is the sap that our tired branches need for revival.
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5 Priorities for Mentoring Chinese Church Leaders

If I had a thousand pounds China should have it- if I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for Him? Can we do enough for such a precious Saviour? -Hudson Taylor (circa 1900)

5 mentoring needs of leaders in China

The church in China has been growing rapidly for many years. We know some things about the development student ministry in China but it is still somewhat of a mystery to the outside world. Yet one thing that China has a lot of is students. So what challenges will the Chinese church face in the coming decades as they raise up the next generation of young leaders? How will they provide the needed mentoring to grow the church and reach the millions of Chinese who do not yet know Jesus? Here are 5 current needs for mentoring among Chinese church leaders…