In this presentation Dave Edgren teaches youth leaders how to use storytelling to connect with teenagers. He begins with stage‑presence fundamentals, urging storytellers to claim the entire stage and move purposefully rather than standing still or pacing aimlessly. He explains how to match physical gestures to audience size and age, using larger motions for bigger crowds and younger listeners. Edgren then breaks down the essential components of a story—character, goal, conflict, and values—illustrating each with the biblical narrative of Nehemiah. He shows how to define a main goal (the lesson for teens) and a sub‑goal (the plot of the story), and how to select which details to include or omit to keep the focus on the intended value (e.g., “joy is strength”). The talk shifts to teen‑specific dynamics, emphasizing that teenagers are navigating identity and sit between junior and youth stages. He advises leaders to gauge the group’s maturity by talking with the teens and their leaders, then tailor the story accordingly. Practical rules for speaking to teens are offered: relax, be authentic, maintain high integrity, and be willing to apologize when a presentation falls short. Throughout, Edgren stresses that story, when crafted and delivered thoughtfully, can bridge the gap between the messenger and teenage listeners, making biblical truths relevant to their lives.
Chapters
You can enhance the effectiveness of your ministry to teenagers through the power of story. Now before we deal with the teenagers and before we get into the story seat, I'd like to just give you some simple basic tips that you would have seen in the Nehemiah story that we just told. The one is that the stage is yours, and we've drawn a picture here. The stage Basically, you've got all the stage. If you're the storyteller, while you're telling the story, you own the stage. And what often happens, a lot of people will stand in one place and tell their story. That's fine, as long as you realize the whole stage is yours. Because it makes a statement to the audience if you stand in one place. If it's part of the story, you're locked in a prison cell, or you're handicapped or something, then it adds to the effect. But if it's a nervous thing that you just stand in one place, then it's clear to the audience that something's uncomfortable with you. The other side of that is some people pace and they walk from one end of the stage to the other for no reason, and the audience kind of gets this idea of, "Where is he going? Where is he going with his story? What's he doing?" And so when you're telling a story, recognize that the stage is yours and you can use it how you want. In the Nehemiah story, I modeled this idea by having the two posts You have the post that's on one side and you have the post that's on the other side, and the idea of those two posts was to separate where things are supposed to be, the fence post, and where things are, and they're in the wrong place. Where Pete— God wants his people, when Nehemiah and Ezra reads the law, and where God's people are wishing they were all over there. And when I do this as a full-length talk for teens, I then move it to the cross and talk about that we know we're a long ways from where God has created us to be. We were meant to be be way over here, but we're a long ways over here. And this is especially something teens are going through as they're looking at themselves and who am I and what am I supposed to be doing. And, and they kind of have all this pressure on them and they feel like there's so far to go. And when you put the cross in the middle and you connect it with Hebrews 12:2 and you say, fix your eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, and he reached— remember it says fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. He starts it, he starts us from where we are, and he perfects it until we get there. And that's a beautiful message for everyone, but particularly for teens. The other thing that I'd like to illustrate to you today is that when you are telling stories, think about the audience that's in front of you when it comes to gestures. I often get asked by people, how do you know what, you know, whether, what to do as far as, does it, does it make you feel silly to do big gestures and stuff? My general rule is this: the bigger the audience, the bigger the gestures I'll do. The smaller the age group, so the younger the audience, the bigger gestures I'll do. So if I have a group of 5 youth, I'm not going to be jumping around telling my story. I'm going to be sitting still like they are and talking to them. If, on the other hand, I have a group of 100-year— 5-year-olds, I'm going to be all over the place because they love that. One of the reasons I love to tell stories to a mixed age group is because You can act up for the little ones, and some of the big ones kind of enjoy it and they laugh about it, and you can say something fairly deep and serious for the older kids, and some of the younger kids will go, "Oh, I get that." So sometimes it can be a benefit to speak to a mixed group, but my general rule is if it's a big crowd, big motions. If it's a young crowd, big motions. Now let's move into the story seat. We've looked at this idea that in this circle is all that we need to understand story. Character, goals, that conflict, and values right through the middle of it all. We looked at character and we've looked at values, but what about goal, um, goals and conflict? When we look at goals and conflict, and the reason why I want to do them together is because they really go together, the goal is really saying how will the story end? What is the main point of the story? Well, the main point of the story will be what— how the story will end. How will the character achieve his goal? So that's, that's the main point of the story. The sub one is— sub goal is how will the story mature? How will I help the story to grow and to become a more deep and enriched story? Or is there another plot line that I need to run through the story to make the main goal happen? Now when we look at the story of Nehemiah that we just shared together, When you say, "What's the main goal of the story?" Well, the main goal of the story in my mind as the teller is not the main goal of the character Nehemiah. Nehemiah's main goal is to build the wall. But my main goal, I say in the very first sentence, it was Nehemiah's job to make people happy. And then I finish the story by saying, "For the joy of the Lord is our strength." My main goal is to take the teens, from the idea of being happy to realizing that joy is strength. So my main goal is for them to be— to recognize that joy is strength. The sub-goal is Nehemiah building his wall, and he has all the internal conflict and the external conflict going on in his experience. The internal conflict is, is him wanting to go build the wall but being afraid of what the king will do, so he's hiding it for a long time and he's got all this frustration, and finally it bursts out. The external conflict is he's the king. The king could have his head. There's also some external conflict, for those of you Bible scholars out there, that I don't tell in the story. The three friends— or, well, they're, they're three friends, they're not friends to Nehemiah— but they try to stop him from building the wall, and they basically terrorize him and his workers while they're trying to do things. And I completely leave that out of the story because the value that I'm working on in building my story is the joy of the Lord is your strength. And those three guys, they're part of the story but not part of the value that I'm trying to teach, so I just leave them out of the telling of the story. So it's important to choose what you're going to include and what you're going to not include. So at the beginning of the story, Nehemiah's internal conflict is he wants to build the wall. At the end of the story, his internal conflict is all these people are weeping. And it's in the way I, I tell it that way so that I'm bringing that main value to a head. And all these people are weeping. Nehemiah has flashbacks of having to make everyone happy before the king, and he says, Come here, stop crying, the joy of the Lord is your strength. And then boom, there we have it. We have— we've achieved our main goal and the people celebrate. And you've achieved the end of your story. So when you're working on a goal, you've got your goal, your plot, or your main— your main question. Your main goal is your plot, really. And then you've got your conflict that gets in the way. Once you've resolved your conflict, the conflict stands between the character and his goal. Once you've resolved that You finished the story. Okay, let's deal with these teenagers. Teenagers are a tough crowd. And when you're ministering to teenagers, one thing that's really important to remember is that they're dealing with their new self. They're struggling with who they are and their identity. And when you're speaking to a crowd, whether it's a classroom of teenagers or whether it's an audience of teenagers at a big camp, a camp meeting or something, they're stuck. Somewhere between juniors and youth. And every audience of teens is different, and you really have to spend— more than any other audience— you have to spend the most time with teens, with the audience as a whole, gauging where they're at. Are they more like juniors? Are they more still into fun and they'll get involved and they'll play games together and they'll laugh and they'll be kids? Or are they more like youth and they want to sit down and they want to be serious and They're more about talking about their lives and that kind of thing. What is this audience like? You can— the best thing to do is go and talk to them. Get to know the kids before you speak to them. Not all of them, but take a sampling. Just walk up, get to know a few kids, and kind of gauge how do they feel to you. Do they feel like they're younger than an average teen, or do they feel like they're older than an average teen? And then talk to their leaders. Ask their leaders, what do you think of this group of teens compared to other years when you've had teens? Are they Are they older than your average teen, younger? What should I do? How should I approach them? You can ask it like this: Should I approach them more like juniors or more like youth? 'Cause teens really are this middle ground where they're becoming adults and they're leaving childhood, but they're topsy-turvy in the middle, and it can be really hard to define them. But we know one thing: story speaks to everyone. So when you tell your story If you know, are they more like juniors or more like youth, you'll know how you're going to tell your story to them. Now I have some basic rules when I speak to teens. One is relax. Just don't take yourself so seriously because most of them aren't taking you seriously. And so if you can just relax and say, "I'm just gonna do what I'm here to do. I'm gonna enjoy myself. I'm going to have fun." And put a smile on your face and actually have fun. And then be honest about who you are. Be honest about your story. Have high integrity because teens Teens are reading people all the time, and they're not happy at all if somebody comes and pretends they're something they're not. So be honest, be who you really are in front of them, and apologize if necessary. This is counterintuitive to most presentation styles. If you do something, you just forget it the next time. But with teens, for instance, one time I just did the wrong sermon on the very first night of an entire week of camp meeting, and it was so bad that I had another leader come up and say, "What happened, Dave? You really missed them." So the next morning I got up and I said, "Hey guys, listen, I gotta apologize. I'm sorry about last night. I was boring and that's not your fault, that's my fault. And I promise you it won't happen again." And then I told one of my favorite stories to tell so that I knew that I would hit as well as I could and I targeted them as well as I can. So I challenge you to increase and enhance your effectiveness with teenagers by using the power of story.
