Tell Me a Story - The Art of Preaching Narrative

There's nothing like a good story - especially when there's a point to it. There's an art to narrative preaching - both Old Testament and New Testament - that lets good preachers bring ancient stories to life, and does justice to the original purpose of the narrative. We'll be exploring it it class this week, and here are the notes!

If you were at the lecture (which was lots of fun), you'll notice I've added a few points to the list below...

GENERAL TIPS FOR NARRATIVE PREACHING

1. Don’t turn narrative into dry assertions of principle or fact. Keep the story alive.
2. Work on your storytelling skills. Retelling in the present tense can help!
3. Look for repetition of words or ideas. They usually help find the main point!
4. Look for hints of a future state or a desired state that take the narrative forward. Highlight them in your storytelling, but don’t defuse too much of the tension.
5. Look for answers to unresolved questions in the rest of the narrative. Be aware of the answers in advance, but don’t necessarily answer them immediately for your listeners. Again, respect the tension and resolution rhythms created by the narrative.
6. Look for things that don’t fit, or are jarring or surprising. They’re often important.
7. Be careful not to over embellish. It’s good to recreate a scene, but try to stick with the props and scenery provided by the text where possible. Otherwise you might be creating a distraction. Usually, if you need to know something you’ll be told. 

As a bonus, here's an article from Doug Green, Westminster Seminary Philadelphia, who makes some of the same points - but much more fluently!

Preaching New Testament Narrative

This week's lecture notes are here.
A sample sermon from Mark 11 is here.
See you in class - extra points for anyone who matches Leo and brings a printout of the notes in advance!

The Genius of Driscoll

Mark Driscoll is a communication phenomenon. But what makes him tick? What is it about his style and manner that makes him so commanding and a speaker? How does he energise his words? In class, we listened to the first section of his recent sermon on Luke 8:40-46, looking for clues to his effectiveness. The transcript of the first few minutes of Driscoll's sermon is below, or if you want to grab the full fifteen minute transcript you can download the word file here. The full talk is 63 minutes long, and you can download audio here.

We noticed immediately that Driscoll moves narrative into the present by retelling in the present tense, naturally inserting present day analogies (like 'having a Jack Bauer day', kids 'taking a day off school' to see Jesus) and also by making direct association between Jesus and the disciples and Driscoll and the Mars Hill elders.

There's plenty more to talk about in this. Stay tuned.


JESUS HEALS A WOMAN AND A GIRL
Mark Driscoll Transcript (First 15 minutes of 63:38)
2591 words at average 172 wpm. (163 wpm in intro)
Well, happy one-third Mars Hill.
It will take a hundred and six sermons to get through Luke and today is number 35. (Woohooo!)
We are one third of the way through Luke and today we are in Luke 8 30 through 46 as Jesus heals a woman and a young girl.
As you’re turning there, you’re going to see Jesus absolutely transform the lives of an older woman and a younger girl as he loves and serves them both exceedingly well. We’ll start with the fact that Jesus cleanses, and Luke chapter 8 verses 40 through 48, and jump right into the story. Luke chapter 8 verse 40.
Now, when Jesus returned. Returned from where? Casting demons out of the demon possessed man. Let me just unpack Jesus’ succession of Jack Bauer days. Has large crowds coming to him, he’s healing and performing miracles, he needs a break, so he gets in a boat and he’s so exhausted that as they row across the sea of Galilee an enormous storm comes upon them and he is so tired that although their life is in danger, he’s asleep on the boat. That’s how tired he is. They wake him up and he calms the storm, he commands creation to obey him, they rowed to the other side of the lake, he gets off the boat, and here comes the demon possessed man, naked, crazy, the guy who broke shackles and lived in the graveyard, so that’s the welcoming committee. So this is no day off or day at the spa for Jesus, he casts the demons out of the man, ministers to those people, gets back in the boat, goes across the lake, gets out of the boat, and here’s an entirely new crowd of needy people. Jesus is unbelievable in his outpouring of love, affection and service for people, and there are seasons of ministry that feel like this.
I would say on behalf of your elders, it’s been one of those seasons for the past month or two, Grace recently asked, did you have a hard day? No, I had a hard LIFE. Ahhh. But yes that would include a hard day. There are just SEASONS like that where the needs are SO GREAT that everywhere you go and everyone you talk to and everything you see just reveals greater needs for love and care and compassion and teaching and prayer and service and funds and help and Jesus is having this succession of experiences.
Now when Jesus returned the crowd welcomed him. So, everyone took the day off work, and got off school and they’re all just waiting on the shore. Can you see it? Now here comes the disciples rowing up, yeppp, there they are, and Jesus is coming, there are first second third, they’re all like the DMV, everybody’s got a number, lined up, waiting for their appointment with Jesus, their list of needs, for they were all waiting for him. (3:10)

To be continued...