Immediately following the service, a retired pastor called me off to the side. "Joe, what you said was right. But may I give you a word of counsel?" He said, "Carlyle Marney once said the people are stuck in the mud and you throw them a rope. Now, if you jerk the rope, it breaks and they're in there for good. The best way to get them out is by keeping a steady pressure on the rope."

As the Lord sent good counsel by these men, I began to see there were better ways of addressing these hot-button issues than taking them by the horns, so to speak. It's possible to do an end-run -- to use a football analogy -- and come at the matter from a different direction.

The prophet Nathan and John the Baptist were given the same assignment: confront a king about his immorality and adultery. John waded in boldly, pointed his finger in the face of the ruler, and announced, "It is not right!" Nathan told the king a story and showed him the unfairness of what he had done. John was thrown into prison and later beheaded, while Nathan had the pleasure of seeing King David humble himself and repent.

As with a lot of illustrations, this one has its limitations. Herod Antipas and King David were opposites in a hundred ways, and any preacher would have preferred Nathan's assignment to John's.

On several occasions when the Apostle Paul was in shackles and about to be lynched -- either by a mob or a government official -- he defused the hostility and made his point by telling a story. The story was frequently his own testimony, but just asoften was the story of Jesus. He was a powerful and effective evangelist.

At a national meeting of our denomination some years back, we were trying to conduct a business meeting with 30,000 people in a room, and each one with the privilege of speaking into a microphone on the issues at hand. Pity our poor presiding officers and parliamentarians! We were deeply enmeshed in some controversial point when Bob Franklin of Montgomery, Alabama, was recognized to speak.

"This whole matter reminds me of something that happened when I was growing up in rural Alabama," he began. "Sometimes the calf would get out of the pasture and my dad would keep me home from school to help him find it. I still remember the time we were walking up a holler, when we came to where it forked. Mydad said, 'Son, you go that way and I'll go this way. Because I just have an idea that calf could be on both sides of this ridge!'"

His story addressed our situation so perfectly, making the point that the truth might indeed lie on both sides of thematter we were discussing.

Now, I'm a conservative Bible-believing Southern Baptist preacher. The positions I hold on most doctrinal and social issues are also held by another40,000 or so of our pastors and millions of our people. And yet, there are points to be made to our folks.Someone has to remind us to love the unlovely, to feed the hungry, not to overlook the homeless, to welcome the fallen, and to forgive sinners. And as a pastor, that's my job.

A well-placed story can work wonders. Here are two or three whichI've found to be of great value.

Harold Bales was myneighboring pastor in Charlotte, NC, in the 1980s. His church faced a city park where the homeless often congregated, so he began to send his people out to meet them early on Sunday mornings. They would feed them breakfast and bring them into the worship services.

One day an older lady in Harold's church said, "Pastor, why do we have to have all these people in our church?" Harold said, "Because I don't want anyone to go to hell." She said, "Well, I don't want them to go to hell either." He said, "I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about you."

That story makes the point of our obligation to minister to the needy as well as anything I know.

I received a phone call late one Sundaynight from a pastor of a huge church in our state. To this day, I still don't know why he called. We chatted about various things, then he said, "Boy, I really got 'em told tonight." I said, "What did you preach?" He said, "I preached that passage in I Corinthians 6 about the homosexuals and others not going to heaven."

I said, "Did you preach the whole thing?" "What are you talking about?" he said. I said, "After giving that long list of moral failures, Paul says, "But such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified." I let it soak in a moment and said, "Did it ever occur to you that if that church in Corinth was reaching homosexuals for Jesus they must not have had a sign out front saying 'fags will burn in hell forever.' They must have been loving those people into the kingdom."

There was a long pause, then hesaid, "I sure wish I had talked to you before preaching that sermon."

Sometimes I tell our people a story about a gay man I used toknow to give them a little glimpse on what he has had to go through. Bill used to watch our worship services on television and decided to drop in on me one day. "Ifelt I could talk with you," he said.

He had beenraised in a Baptist church in another county and was nowliving on a farm near our town. He knew I did not agree with the life he was living and we would discuss what the Bible says on the subject.I felt he needed a friend and endeavored to be that for him.

One day my wife and I werevisiting the used car lotsin our town, looking to buy her an automobile, and entered one where our salesmanturned out to be my friendBill. He was friendly and helpful, and onthe way home, Margaretbegan asking questions about him. She knew a single young lady or two she might want to match Bill up with. That's when I told her about him.