Thursday, January 18, 2007

What's Your Story?


The first book I finished reading this year is “What’s Your Story?” by Craig Wortmann. Wortmann explains why story telling is so vital in teaching, encouraging and igniting performance. The book is full of nuggets and quotes from leading authorities on story telling. He explores various ways to find, gather, store and use stories.

He further explains how stories connect people and have a natural way of drawing them closer to each other. He also makes the case that one of the most revered books ever published is because it is full of stories – you guessed it – the Bible. The book is totally secular. Mr. Wortmann makes no claim of being a Christian. Yet he makes his point.

My take away -no wonder Christians become close to one another. They share the same stories that are close to their hearts. Wortmann also says that stories are powerful in that while people share the same stories their applications may be different thereby producing even more stories. Think Job, David, Joseph, Abraham, then think Exodus, Kings, Paul, Acts - stories. Wortmann only confirms what God knew all along.

He says stories are everywhere if we are just conscious about them. The idea is we are gold miners and the whole day is silt, mud and sand. Every moment of the day we pan the sand and stuff and then a nugget will most likely come out. Take it (write it down) and store it and throw the rest away. Everyday stories are powerful because they are part of real life. Great read. There’s lots more - Read!

1 comment:

Ree said...

hi pastor joey. God made me a storyteller--that's why i write. i look at people and i think, what's his story? what's her story? i have all these stories, these ideas in my head, and i need to get them out on paper (or on the monitor). i just praise Him that i can make a living doing what i love to do, what he created me to do.

i'll try to get a copy of the book. looks like a great read. thanks. :)