The Parable of the 10 Cheerleaders

The Kingdom is like ten cheerleaders, who took their pom-poms and went to support their marathon runner. They took up their position and started cheering. Five of the cheerleaders were disorganised and brought one bottle of water for the event, and the other five took two bottles of water. When the runner was delayed the cheerleaders started to get thirsty so stopped to drink a bottle of water. Then they continued to cheer.

After a while the crowd got excited and the cheerleaders knew the athletes were nearby. “Share your water with us so we can all keep on cheering” said the disorganised cheerleaders to the others, but the others said “no we need that so we can keeping going, go and find some of your own”.

Whilst they were still looking, the other cheerleaders shook their pom-poms and cheered the runner on, all the way over finish line.

The runner was so pleased with those who had cheered, they were invited to the after race party. The five disorganised cheerleaders tried to go along too, but the marathoner said them, “you were no use, you didn’t cheer for me when it counted- you don’t get to join in the celebrations now!”

 

Frontier Youth Trust first published this parable as part of talesretold.org, an online scrapbook that brings together a wide collection of parables to resource pioneering discipleship and inspire story telling.