Max Gets It

Two days ago I was driving my son to his friends house and he asked me a great question. "Who are your two favorite authors and your two favorite illustrators?" I love to read. I love books. I love that my 8 year old son asked me a book question and I love his answer even more.

Before he told me his, of course, I had to tell him mine. This is not an easy thing to do. How can I just share two? To resolve this dilemma I resorted to one author he might be familiar with and one author that I just read a couple of hours before. The first author I shared was C.S. Lewis. Harrison would be familiar with him because I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to him and he had seen the movie a couple of months ago. The second I mentioned was Eugene Peterson who translated The Message and whose book, Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places, I am now reading and loving. He interrupted me before I could tell him my favorite illustrators. Andrei Rublev, maybe? (Iconographers are divine illustrators.)

What shocked me is that Harrison told me his two favorite authors were Max Lucado and Chester Drawers. Now I wasn't surprised about Chester. Mr. Drawers is a children's author who recently visited my son's school. He loved him. He just saw him the week before and hence he was his favorite. The first author he mentioned, however, was a total surprise to me. I didn't like it at first but now I love the fact that Harrison named Max Lucado as one of his favorites.

I have never been a huge Lucado fan although I have enjoyed hearing him preach. The first Lucado book I ever read was No Wonder They Call Him Savior back in college. I loved it then but felt that his other books were an aweful lot like the first one so I never dug into him again. I do appreciate Max's honesty though. When I visited his church in San Antonio a few years ago he acknowledged to the congregation that he was leaving for a writing retreat where he would transform many of the previous year's sermons into a book. That is refreshing.

Here is why Harrison likes Max and here is why I think Max is on the right track. He is a storyteller. There are people today, and suspect they will always be with us, who demand what they call solid teaching. This level of teaching is marked by expository teaching, propositional truth, theological erudition and doctrinal clarity. These kinds of sermons are fine but it is sad that many people simply don't hear them. They don't hear these sermons because the story is missing.

Max is a master storyteller. His skill in telling stories enables his readers to connect with the big story, the story of Jesus. By taking the time to highlight the simple details he ambushes his reader with profound truths. However, the truths he propounds are usually best communicated in a good yarn, not a theological formula.

Perhaps those of us who teach and preach should take a lesson or two from Max. The reason people from 8 to 85 like him is because he captures the imagination of his reader. He then releases them so that they can find how their story fits into the story of Jesus. He captivates the imagination of his reader and listener. Too many of us kill it. He takes his clue from the best teacher the world has ever known. Or, should I say, the best storyteller the world has ever known.