A Story is worth more than advice

Last month my family was vacationing in Oregon. We LOVE Oregon. Whenever we visit (at least once a year), Deborah and I drop the kids off at the in-laws and spend a couple of days in Portland. You may disagree with me, but Portland is close to my idea of Heaven: food carts; Powell’s bookstore; crisp air (or rain); lot’s of green; walkable streets….perfect.

While we were there, we once again experienced the wonderful food-cart culture in downtown. There is a chicken-rice cart that is out of this world…but I digress. We discovered a yogurt cart that caught our interest and we walked up to order some dessert. As we were checking out the options, I noticed a handwritten sign in the window: “Advice- .50¢ / Stories- .75¢.”

I was amazed!

I asked the twenty-something working the the cart if he had written this. He admitted that he had. I told him that was awesome—that he really got it.

A story is worth more than advice!

Of course, I thought of church leadership. So often we work in the world of advice. We lead by telling people what to do. We distribute policy manuals, teach seminars, give direction, and line out the 1-2-3’s of how to administrate the particulars of the ministry we are leading. Don’t get me wrong—that is all average cost penis enlargement surgery good and necessary. But it’s just not enough.

Advice is important, but it’s never a substitute for a great story: A story is worth more than advice!

We need to remember this. Those we lead are longing for stories. Not just what to do, but why we do what we do; and that can almost always be tied to a story. A need for story is embedded in the human psyche, so a good narrative that explains the purpose to why something is important will lodge itself into our minds with a far greater impact than a didactic principle (advice) will.

When you tell a volunteer a story about a time in your ministry when something happened that set a rock-solid conviction about why  you do what you do, that is more valuable than mountains of policy. As human beings, we long for story; worlds of dry instruction will never fully substitute for a personal account. We know who will win the weekend box-office competition between a how-to movie (do they even make those?) and a compelling action flick.

Advice is good and necessary; stories can be much more effective. Pay 50¢ for one, and 75¢ for the other.

And I’ll give you a dollar if you can tell me a great story in which I can discover fantastic advice!