OUTLINING SERMONS- Narrative–018
The easiest and most effective sermons are narrative sermons or stories. This lecture teaches you how to outline your narrative sermons by outlining blocks of thought instead of facts.
The Narrative Sermon
With the narrative sermon the preacher uses storytelling to bring out the word of God. The preacher takes a story from the Bible and describes it using literature tools such as imagery and symbols to help the hearers be able to really imagine what is going on in the story. There are things that storytelling sermons should accomplish. It should give a contemporary appeal to Biblical tradition. It should guide the imaging the hearers do, and lastly it should help identify the meaning within the stories. The narrative sermons can be what makes people want to know more or become beyond confused.
The power of an intriguing story can not only captivate an audience, but when presented in a familiar and personal way, it can communicate the important truths. Preachers have long recognized that the Bible is told in story form. Yet the responses to the topic of narrative preaching have varied over the years, from singing its praises to outright rejection. The homiletically landscape is always changing, but what many thought might be a fad is still being homiletically discussed in the seminaries and practiced in many a pulpit. Delivery and manner is not neutral. The message of a sermon is either helped or hindered by delivery. There are great sermons that today’s listeners will never hear because there was no effort to communicate the truth appropriately. Preachers must learn to trust in the authority of God to speak through the Scriptures.
Preaching from Memory to Hope
by: Thomas Long
publisher: Westminster John Knox, published: 2009-04-02
ASIN: 0664234224
EAN: 9780664234225
sales rank: 201817
price: $11.67 (new), $8.99 (used)
In this compelling and hard-hitting book, respected preacher and teacher Tom Long identifies and responds to the most substantive theological forces and challenges facing preaching today. The issues, he says, are fourfold: the decline in the quality of narrative preaching and the need for its reinvigoration; the tendency of preachers to ignore Gods action and presence in our midst; the return of the churchs old nemesis, Gnosticism, evidenced in todays new spirituality; and the absence of eschatology in the pulpit.
Long once again has his finger on the pulse of American preaching, demonstrated by his creative responses to these challenges. Whether he is calling for theologically smarter and more ethically discerning preaching, providing a method of interpretation that will allow pastors to recover the emphasis on God in our midst, or encouraging a kind of interfaith dialogue with gnosticism, he demonstrates why he has long been considered one of the most thoughtful and intelligent preachers in America today.
