Storytelling has always been a marvelous way to open the minds of people to new ways of thinking and understanding, and open their hearts to new ways of acceptance and love. Therefore, it makes sense that there are more parables included in the Gospel of Luke than any of the other gospels. There are 13 parables in Mark, 29 in Matthew, and 37 in Luke. The Gospel of John is unique and has only two parable-like images: the shepherd and sheep and the vine and the branches. The use of parables as a storytelling method or as a style of writing is used when the author wants the audience or reader to be fully engaged in the discovery process. Parables do not define things precisely as lectures are designed to do, but rather they use comparisons to describe some aspect of how things are related to one another. In the case of the parables that Jesus told, they describe how God acts in history and interacts with human beings. Most parables contain some elements within the story that seem strange or unusual, especially to the original audience. Parables can be as simple as the simile-style used in the Gospel of John ("I am the vine; you are the branches") (John 15:5) or as complex as the parable of the Sower and the Seed (Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:3-9 and Luke 8:1-15) in which case Jesus takes the time to explain the meaning of the images of the seed to the twelve apostles after the crowd has dispersed. The parables found in the gospels often include an element of surprise so