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Many critics like to claim that George MacDonald was a "failed minister" who, having no other recourse, was forced to write. Yet the truth is that MacDonald continued to preach throughout his life, when his health allowed, and that he turned down some very desirable pulpit offers. He was convinced that his stories and poetry were themselves significant pastoral ministry, and he took his role as author very seriously. "The best thing you can do for your fellow," he wrote, "next to rousing his conscience, is—not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself."

MacDonald recognized the potential of being transformed by stories—that the reader or listener could learn within the framework of the story itself. He believed that readers could come to a better understanding of God if what they read was shaped by "Sacred Story"—both Scripture and the stories influenced by Scripture. He believed that an understanding of the intrinsically relational God could not be grasped outside of a relational hermeneutic; that a list of dry propositions would never be able to convey what the fullness of story—story rooted in Sacred Story—could. This is a surprisingly contemporary conviction, and yet one as old as Genesis. For MacDonald, it is also as relevant as Genesis.

What pastor does not know that if one desires to grab the attention of every tired and pre-occupied person in the pew, a story rarely fails? And that the story might be the only thing listeners remember the following week? Unfortunately, this is often seen as a failing of the people. Yet from the very beginning Scripture is filled with stories and references to them. Indeed there is more story in the Bible than any other genre.

The New Testament begins with the Crucial Story, four times over. It then continues with epistles written in the expectation that their audiences already know the New Story as well as the Old Testament stories—and thus will understand the epistles. To read those epistles without knowing the stories that inform them is akin to reading commentaries without bothering with the text commented upon. Nonetheless, many Western churches have become solely "epistle churches," and perhaps to these in particular MacDonald offers a reminder that it is the gospel that is "good news."

George MacDonald grew up in a culture that placed great value upon story—and immense value upon knowing the Bible in its entirety. He was also gifted with an education that introduced him to a wealth of storied literature, not only the stories of ancient Scotland but those of ancient Greece, the Norse myths, the French ballads, and the German Märchen (fairy tales). In Mallory, Dante, Chaucer, Milton, Spenser, Goethe, Shakespeare, and Bunyan, he discovered profound stories that were shaped by and responded to Scripture. He found the same in such poets as Herbert, Crashaw, and Sidney, and in contemporaries such as Coleridge, Zola, and Tolstoy.

Writers like these continually showed him new perspectives on old stories and taught him how to face the challenges of human existence, how to live life more abundantly by better knowing his God and creation. The more time he spent journeying with the characters of these texts, the more they challenged and equipped him.

But MacDonald was also very aware—as both the Bible and his favorite authors made absolutely clear—that nobility of thought is nothing without nobility of deed. Spending all of his time within these great texts would truly teach him about life, yet if he did not act upon what he was learning, the knowledge would poison him. MacDonald makes considerable effort in his novels to illustrate this. In Lilith he shows how the protagonist Vane has spent his life within the confines of mental exploration, not risking the complications or rewards of human relationship, not deigning to admit a need of others. As redemption begins to occur, Vane learns to say, "To understand is not more wonderful than to love. … I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking! 'Any man,' I said now, 'is more than the greatest of books!'" A significant part of Vane's journey has involved discovering that knowledge without relationship is death. This is a persistent theme for MacDonald, perhaps depicted most chillingly in the seemingly affable scholar Uncle Stoddart in Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood.

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