After yesterday’s post of how powerful storytelling really is and how that influences how we tell God’s Story, I thought it appropriate to follow-up with a few other storytelling resources for you guys.

Pixar: 22 Storytelling Tips

Emma Coats was a Storyboard Artist at Pixar Animation Studios and now directs films in Hollywood. From time to time she tweets rules and observations about storytelling. Here are 22 of her top tweets about telling stories.

You can take and immediately apply most of these tips to your next talk at youth group. If you do, I’d love to hear how you did it in the comments!

Perhaps #14 on the list is my favorite because it means so much for why we tell God’s story the way we do:

“Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.”

Tip #4 is equally as relevant to telling God’s Story because her story outline is the exact story we see laid out in scripture.

“Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.”

Definitely go read all 22 of her storytelling tweets and start applying those principles to how you tell God’s Story to teenagers.

Understanding the story aspects of God’s Story

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, some of my co-workers at Epipheo are among the world’s most talented storytellers. I love learning from these guys, especially how it applies to telling God’s Story because God’s Story really is the most life-changing and captivating story ever! The guys I work with really have a of fascinating insights into how we tell and live out that story.

A few weeks ago one of my co-workers actually taught about that very thing at a local church here in Cincinnati. His message is titled, “The Story of God,” and it contains several epiphanies about the power of God’s Story and the implications it has for how we live our lives. The next time you a half hour, definitely listen to it. You’ll understand God’s Story much differently than you probably do now. And it may just change your life… and then your ministry.

Listen to the mp3 of,

Posted on August 9, 2012