Search results
Feb 1, 2022 · Dr. Bruce Ballast explores how to make a narrative sermon for your congregation. Explanations are given and examples described for preachers.
A narrative sermon makes listeners ask questions, seek more information, jump ahead, and become part of the story as you tell it. What the best storytelling does is establish a three-way connection among the audience, the storyteller, and the characters in the story.
People also ask
How do you make a narrative sermon?
What is a frame narrative sermon?
What do preachers and congregations receive from a narrative style?
What are the different types of narrative sermons?
- Grace. A Texas police officer writes a ticket but folded a $100 bill inside the citation. Read the story about grace. God gives us a great gift, even though we are guilty.
- Teamwork. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that everyone writes, put the mega-staffed, super-popular Microsoft Encarta out of business. Read the Wikipedia article about Wikipedia and remind your congregation that teamwork makes the dream work; you’re stronger together than any one person alone.
- Faithfulness. Chinese bamboo produces very little outward growth for the first four years of its life. Though it’s puny and pitiful, there’s something powerful happening underground.
- Restoration. Starbucks reclaimed four shipping containers and made a pretty cool coffee shop out of them. They say the containers are “reclaimed, refurnished, renewed and revived.”
Not all narrative sermons are memorable. But because of the power of a well-done narrative sermon, I resolved to make narrative preaching part of my own repertoire. Here are some lessons I’ve learned by preaching what I call Expository Character Narrative Sermons (ECNS).
The narrative sermon focuses on revealing to the hearer the truth about life contained in the interactions between God and man and fellow human beings. Thus, it is a form of Biblical preaching. Narrative preaching can be presented in one of two ways: first, the storytelling mode; second, the introduction, body, conclusion mode. Each can be ...
First person narrative sermons should lead the audience through the five stages of a typical plot: Background, conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution. The next paragraphs offer suggestions for developing each of the five stages of the sermon’s plot. Background. Keep the first stage, background, as short as possible.
In a frame narrative sermon, the preacher not only may choose to introduce the narrative with some sort of introduction outside of the narrative itself, but he or she also may choose to use a conclusion that focuses the narrative for the congregation.
