Can we handle the truth?

Preacher friends, listening back over your recorded sermons, is this what you hear?

I come not to critique our attempts to be cool, up to date, or relevant, but to praise proclaimers who have made the effort to establish common ground with their listeners.  I appreciate a good friend and preacher who parlayed his love for movies into good sermon illustrations.

I confess to having offered up the long version of a memorized quote from A Few Good Men, just to prove it could be done.  I confess the temptation to bring some of my favorite lines from Pulp Fiction some Sundays.  The title of that sermon might be "I'm Pretty Far from OK".

I can tell you every movie quoted in the Pepsi ad.  We can even start a good debate as to whether one of them is from Good Will Hunting or Rio Bravo.

What I love about the ad, though, is that the quotes are brought together to tell a different story. No one's sitting around asking, "Remember when Tom Hanks said that?"  But we do remember.  We remember lines from movies, can probably even quote them and recall the actual scenes they come from.  Better yet, we might remember who was sitting with us in the theater the first time we heard it.  If we can connect with that moment again, perhaps there is some hope for continuing a conversation that helps folks get to know each other better.

There has to be more to it than the need to appear to be cool.  We create room for conversation.

So, here are a few ideas...

• Get people talking with each other.  
• Ask them to share their favorite line from a movie and then ask them why they like it so much.  
• Play a little trivia with some quotes, see who can name the movies they're from.  
• Start some conversations around a singular quote.  Find out why that line sticks with us.
• What if some of our favorite lines from the Bible were lines from the movies?  For instance, remember when Jesus turned to that fisherman and said, "Come with me if you want to live," or something like that?

Who knows?  Perhaps by telling one story, we get to tell and hear The Story.