I finally finished, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a book this much yet read it so slowly.

There will be a few other posts based on this book but one concept that bears mentioning is that stories stick with people…even if they are not true.  Here is a great example…

In the 1960s and 1970s, the tradition of Halloween trick-or-treating came
under attack. Rumors circulated about Halloween sadists who put razor blades
in apples and booby-trapped pieces of candy. The rumors affected the
Halloween tradition nationwide. Parents carefully examined their children’s
candy bags. Schools opened their doors at night so that kids could
trick-or-treat in a safe environment. Hospitals volunteered to X-ray candy
bags.

In 1985, an ABC News poll showed that 60 percent of parents worried that
their children might be victimized. To this day, many parents warn their
children not to eat any snacks that aren’t prepack-aged.

This is a sad
story: a family holiday sullied by bad people who, inexplicably, wish to
harm children. But in 1985 the story took a strange twist. Researchers
discovered something shocking about the candy-tampering epidemic: It was a
myth.

The researchers, sociologists Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi, studied every
reported Halloween incident since 1958. They found no in-stances where
strangers caused children life-threatening harm on Halloween by tampering
with their candy.

Two children did die on Halloween, but their deaths weren’t caused by
strangers. A five-year-old boy found his uncle’s heroin stash and overdosed.
His relatives initially tried to cover their tracks by sprinkling heroin on
his candy. In another case, a father, hoping to collect on an insurance
settlement, caused the death of his own son by contaminating his candy with
cyanide.

In other words, the best social science evidence reveals that taking candy
from strangers is perfectly okay. It’s your family you should worry about.

So…look for a good story that helps make your point in this week’s sermon.  (Even better if it is true!!!) Read a wide variety of blogs, books, and magazines.  Search…be a scavenger.  Use stories!!!