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JESUS AS A STORYTELLER – INTRODUCTION TO PARABLES

Truth to Teach (Source)

Heart concept: Growth – Maturity - Fruitfulness
 Jesus used stories to teach the truth about God and his Kingdom for a response of faith.

 An introduction to the use of parables

Way to Work (Means)

1. Briefly recap on the previous half-term’s topic of ‘Rhymes for all Reasons’.

2. Introduce the new topic of stories – ‘True Stories and Stories with Truths’.
Ask if the children know that Jesus told stories? Crowds would gather around him. Sometimes they
would all sit down, and frequently Jesus would tell them a story. Do they think he was a good
storyteller? Do they know any of the stories he told?

3. Jesus didn’t write any of them down as far as we know but he made them up, as his Father showed him
things. It was Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, whom God used to record these stories accurately for
us, so they would not get lost over time.

4. Jesus’ stories were about real, everyday events and experiences, things that ordinary people knew
about, e.g. missing sheep, a farmer sowing seed, people building houses. What is it that makes them
worth listening to, or worth reading?

5. Each of Jesus’ stories contains truth about God and his Kingdom. Each story has a hidden meaning,
for Jesus did not just tell stories to keep people amused. He told stories to help people understand
what Father God is like, and how he wants us to live and love one another. We call Jesus’ stories
parables.

Sometimes people call them Kingdom Tales, because through them we can learn more about living in
the Kingdom of God. Remember that the Kingdom of God is not a place like the United Kingdom, but it
simply means letting Jesus be the King in your life. Parables contain truths about what it means to let
Jesus be the King in our lives.

6. Show a bag of chocolate covered raisins. Explain that when you are listening to a parable or reading
one, it is like eating a sweet with something in the middle. Some people will just chew the whole thing
up really quickly, swallow and it is gone. Others will begin to suck the sweet. It seems sweet, but as
you carry on you are left with the raisin. As you suck a parable carefully, you realise that this isn’t
just a sweet little story, but that there is a ‘raisin’ of truth right in the centre of it.

7. Let each child have a sweet, and begin to share the Parable of the Sower in ‘Stories That Jesus Told’
by Patricia St John (ISBN 0-948902-97-3) or a similar book.

8. Let the children suggest what the ‘raisin’ of truth is in the parable. (Some people’s hearts are like
good soil ready to receive God’s word and able to bear fruit.)

9. Explain that Jesus was not just the Master Story-teller and Teacher; he was a discipler and he wanted
to help people grow in their faith. There were three types of bad soil and one of good soil. But the
good soil needed the farmer to plough it and get it ready for the seeds otherwise it would have been
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