The preacher is the chief storyteller of the congregation’s story and knows the value of telling and retelling it on the occasion when most people are gathered and receptive to the storyteller’s spell, that is, the sermon. This is especially valuable to small membership churches, where neglect of history to the point of institutional amnesia is a telling symptom of a lack of corporate self-esteem. A small membership church that cannot tell its own story is prey to a fabricated story told about it from outside by an unfriendly critic. For the sake of building up the body of Christ, the preacher must become a determined student of congregational history. Then in an act of strategic leadership, the preacher must tell that recovered story from the pulpit.