What was last week?Äôs message about again? The pastor preached on?Ķ.um?Ķ..it was?Ķhmmm?Ķ?Ķ I can?Äôt seem to remember.

Unfortunately, those exaggerated lines can be the reality for many who reflect on Sunday?Äôs sermon later on in the week. It?Äôs not necessarily that the message was bad or that it was particularly boring. It?Äôs just that we have a hard time keeping all of those ideas in our brains for very long. Many times we can remember a particular verbal illustration, and maybe the sermon title, but more often than we?Äôd like, the main ideas escape us when we try to recall them later.

How do we combat this retention problem? Here?Äôs the solution that the teams I?Äôve been part of, have put into practice. Metaphor. Just about the time I was being taught in art school how to make commercial art stick in the mind of consumers (through colors, themes, tag lines and metaphors), the Ginghamsburg worship design began to discover that those same principals applied to worship. I wasn?Äôt there yet, and when I did arrive, I felt right at home, because what I had learned in art school would be part of my weekly routine. There were several elements that were part of our planning each week, but the main glue that made the various pieces of worship stick together (and in worshiper?Äôs brains later) was the metaphor.

Applying a metaphor to your message, simply takes the potentially abstract story or idea(s) your working with, and updates it (them) to a present day tangible equivalent. Substituting familiar objects, stories and situations can make archaic and hard to grasp texts, easy to understand and retain in our limited memory banks. It?Äôs the glue that makes it stick!

When we would develop a successful metaphor, people in our congregation could easily recite the crux of a message months later. It was unbelievable. I heard folks talk about messages from years ago, and it was always tied to the metaphor. People were getting it, I mean, really getting it. Using metaphor to communicate biblical stories, allows us to take what may be hard to understand in today?Äôs culture and present it in a way that makes sense to everyday people. It?Äôs cheap, it?Äôs fun, and with some experience it can be relatively easy.

So what does this look like? I have many favorites that I?Äôve helped develop over the last few years, and picking a favorite is hard. One that has had a lasting impact on my ministry was designed for a service at Ginghamsburg. I love to share the story of one woman?Äôs reaction to a cinema metaphor we created in 1998. Our, then youth pastor, Efrem Smith was preaching on his experience as an African-American man attending a largely Caucasian Christian college. He described walking into a large hallway where a painting depicting heaven covered the walls. This painting, disturbingly filled only with Caucasian men, took Efrem by surprise. His reaction to such an image was to ask himself if he fit into a heaven that looks like that. It didn?Äôt take long for him to figure out that he didn?Äôt think that?Äôs what heaven will look like at all. All who believe will dwell there together, regardless of race, gender, age and so on. So if segregation has no place on heaven, and we will be living there together in harmony, then why don?Äôt we just live like that now, here on earth? He then presented his message title as a preview of heaven cueing off the idea of summer movie trailers that we all regularly see in the theater.

In response, the team came up with the idea of creating one of those cheesy animations that runs after the trailers, and just before the movies start. We would then open worship with this recreation. You probably know this style of animation all to well, filled with the dancing refreshments, crying babies and ringing cell phones. We hoped this would work well to set the mood for worship.

Animation was pretty new to me, but I was feeling up to the challenge. So, with a blank tape in our photographic memory recorders, we went to the movie theater and got special permission to just watch the preview animation. I then set out to recreate that style for our opening piece. See figure 1 for a still from the animation. Len Wilson (then media minister) wrote some copy in the same punchy style and our audio engineer, Jeff Friend, found the perfect announcer voice to make the audio match. We made it as close to the real deal as we possibly could.

Now for the reaction I mentioned above. One woman from our congregation came to me several months after the movie weekend and said, ?ÄúJason you?Äôve ruined my movie going experience.?Äù I was shocked, but she went on to explain, ?ÄúEvery time I go to the movies, and I see that cheesy animation I think about Efrem?Äôs message. When I walk out of the theater I look at those around me differently, and I?Äôm truly reminded to live out the preview of heaven he talked about?Äù. I was blown away. I knew metaphors made the message more understandable, but I never realized until then how it helped worshipers recall with depth, the message long after being given. We?Äôve discovered that the stronger the metaphor, the stronger the sticking power. We?Äôve also learned that when we use metaphors from the culture, and we really redeem them, the culture becomes a reminder of the Gospel. It has completely changed our ministry.

Ok then, you?Äôre convinced now and ready to implement, right? It?Äôs not always that easy now, is it? As I travel across the country, and speak about these very ideas, skeptics have arisen and shared their views. ?ÄúThat waters down the Gospel?Äù, ?ÄúMetaphors are great, but do they remember the verse??Äù and ?ÄúSounds like metaphor is more important than scripture?Äù are just a few of my favorites. Making biblical truth relate to those in today?Äôs culture is not, in my view, watering down the Gospel at all. In fact I?Äôve seen many come to a deeper understanding, because it was presented in a way that they could finally relate to. Besides did it ever occur to you that Jesus taught using metaphor when in the public arena? Metaphors are not at all intended to replace scripture, and they must be strongly tied to scripture, to work. Anything less will do more harm than good. And if you?Äôre wondering, skeptics were present even at Ginghamsburg where we used metaphor every single week.

One teacher in children?Äôs ministry, wasn?Äôt sure she like this new ?Äúgimmick?Äù at first. Then an amazing thing happened. She asked her student?Äôs what worship was about the previous week, and the kids?Äô description sounded as if it was about one of their favorite cartoons. They remembered every nuance. The teacher was impressed, but still skeptical. She repeated the drill the following week, and the results were the same. A transformation began to take place, and it wasn?Äôt long before this skeptic became an advocate for these new Gospel communication forms.

The idea of using metaphor even works when someone from outside of your staff or team is there in the role of guest preacher. One weekend we had a great speaker named Haman Cross who came in from a large church in Detroit. His message focused on the story of the lame man who was lowered through the roof where Jesus was teaching. (Mark 3-5) Jesus sees their faith and heals the man right there on the spot.

A great metaphor for this story is that of a racing pit crew. With out that crew the car can go nowhere. Each member of the pit crew has a specific roll to play, as did the men who helped their friend reach Jesus. They formed a dream team. Haman?Äôs message coupled with the metaphor, helped worshipers identify roles within themselves that would make them candidates for a dream team.

In most cases there is a direct relationship between how good the metaphor is, and how good or effective the overall worship experience is. It is also important to understand that the harder you work at it, the easier (and better) it is for the average person to grasp the concepts you or your pastor is preaching on. The opposite is true as well. The easier you try to make it on yourself when planning (making little, less or no effort) the harder it is for worshipers to get, be inspired, and become transformed by it. So, remember as you plan worship this week to make it a ?Äústicky situation?Äù and use a metaphor. Next week and for the weeks to come you, and your congregation will be glad you did!

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