Narrative Sermon Elements

There are a few basic elements that I teach about narrative preaching. I tell my students that I approach narrative from a storyteller's perspective. Whatever training I have in narrative is really training in storytelling. So, with that as a minimal background, here are some basic steps:

1. STORY - Story occurs when you take basic facts and put it into a communicative form. In the case of narrative preaching, what you are looking for is series of basic facts that come from a text of scripture. The easiest texts are those passages that are already narratives. The bible is full of stories from Adam and Eve in the Garden to the saints before the throne in Revelation. After choosing a story text, you have to put the biblical narrative into some kind of communicative form. For instance, if you tell the story from the point of view of one of the characters, you are choosing a particular form (first person narrative) to share the story. There are many other forms (I listened to one preacher read a letter from Mary to her cousin Elizabeth) and they are only limited by what you feel will fit the communication of the story.
2. STORYING - When telling a story about a past event (as biblical texts are) your goal is storying. Storying is enabling the listeners to suspend present reality and move into a different historical reality. In other words, you have to be able to tell the story in such a way that the listener finds herself transported back in time to the biblical event. Normally, this is a tall task for a novice storytelling. You have to research and find a good story; you have to gather facts and determine the plot twists; you have to learn how to keep things in tension and then resolve the story. Fortunately, the dynamic of the biblical event gives you all these details in such a way to weave a powerful story. If you can communication form that enables you to story, you can find a way to move to storying.
3. STORYTELLING - The crucial step is when the storyteller learns the key to storytelling. Telling an effective story means that you have to actually enter the story. You can't tell effective stories from the outside of an event. For instance, the telling of the birth of your first child or the day of your wedding is a far more powerful story than retelling a recent news article you read in the paper. When you tell a story you have to get inside the event. It's like what an actor does when he goes on stage. You can't say your lines as though you are reading them from the wings. You have to go on stage and immerse yourself in the character in order to perform the story. By doing so, the audience gets "caught up" in the event and experiences the story as a type of "first-hand" event.
   

This is just a brief glimpse into the whole world of narrative. More to come.