This past weekend televisions acros the country were the source of huddles of people, eyes fixed on the main event: Super Bowl Commercials. Watching this year’s collection of consumeristic entertainment reminded me of a simple fact when it comes to teaching preteens: information is not enough.
Super Bowl Commercials could simply tell you facts and information about their product. But they don’t. Instead they invite the viewer to encounter a narrative, tapping into our emotions and selling us their cars and tires and tablets the way.
While the good news of Jesus is not a comercialized product that we sell, it is a story that we tell. Just as advertisers know the power of narrative, providing an emotional encounter that communicates more than mere facts, figures, and information, so to must the people of God be faithful in communicating the message of God and the good news of Jesus as a story worthy of telling and retelling. And fourth, fifth, and sixth graders are anxious to encounter it.
So instead of simply pitching propositions like commercialized wares, watch a commercial and tap into the power of narrative. The story of God is preciely that: a story. And it encounters and redefines our story, inviting us to live as a part of something larger than ourselves, calling us to be the hands and feet and face of God in a fractured and fragmented world.
