Christian Storytelling, Part X: How Shall We Preach?

Nine previous entries on “Christian Storytelling” have yet to get to the point where someone actually tells the story. Mostly, I’ve discussed learning the story, and thinking along the lines of story. A storytelling theology, really. But what happens at the point where someone actually gets up to tell the story?

When I began preaching at 19, I was attracted fairly quickly to the expository model, particularly the verse-by-verse brand of Dr. John MacArthur, Jr. and the Master’s Seminary folks. I bought the line very quickly that it was really the best (read: only) way to treat the Scriptures with honor in one’s preaching.

I think that’s pretty silly now, and I’m going to tell you why. Actually, I’m going to let Kevin Johnson tell you why:

The last thing we need is continual “micro-exegetical” line by line word by word expository preaching through books in order. That should have passed with the Puritans.

What is needed today is the sort of kerygmatic preaching that brings the acts of God to fore in the proclamation of God’s Word so that both in word and in deed (communion, the Lord’s Supper, weekly if possible), the covenant community is brought ever more forward into a unity with God through Christ and by His Spirit. It is this anamnesis (remembrance) in word and deed that brings transformative power to the people of God—to their lives, their communities, their cultures—not technical exegesis or an expository style designed to elucidate bare meaning and application from the text divorced from the main work of God in Jesus Christ. Exegesis and an expository method ought to be among the proper slaves of a preaching that proclaims the powerful Word of God and not become an idol in and of themselves.

Spot on. Not that line-by-line expository preaching can’t be powerfully rooted in Christ, proclaiming his death and resurrection. It’s just that expository preaching needs to be a tool in the hands of the proclaimer of the Christ kerygma, the overarching and central point of all Christian proclamation.

I recall that in Driscoll’s Confessions of a Reformission Rev., he mentioned that learning to connect every sermon to Jesus was difficult, and that his preaching got significantly better when he did. Exalting line-by-line preaching over the Jesus story is just one way of screwing up your ability to connect every sermon to Jesus.

And we must connect every sermon to Jesus. Yes, I said must. One of the pitfalls of expository (and topical) preaching methods is the tendency to “search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have life.” For the expositor, it’s the correct, technical, grammatical-historical reading of a verse that gives life. For the topical preacher, it’s “what the Bible says about X.” For the Christian Storyteller, it’s Jesus. Everything in Scripture points to Jesus, and a sermon without Jesus is a misuse of the point of the Scriptures.

Connecting sermons to Jesus is hard. We’ve been taught that Christology is one branch of the larger discipline of systematic theology. Normally, it’s not even the first point; it’s the third or fourth. How many systematic theologies have you see carry a pattern similar to this: Part I: Bibliology; Part II: Theology Proper; Part III: Christology; and then so on.

What?

Even the well-intentioned preacher fails. I’ve heard preachers declare their desire to make all their theology, all their preaching Christ-centered, only to hear the sermons collapse into moralism all over again. Just recently I heard two sermons in a row on the parables. The first sermon introduced the series, and the preacher was adamant that the parables were about Jesus, not little moral lessons. So we’d be focusing on what the parables teach us about Jesus. There were excellent points about Jesus being both Creator and Redeemer, and Redeemer even before He was Creator.

The next sermon in the series was on the Parable of the Sower. The Sower is Jesus. And that’s about all we got about Jesus. The majority of the rest of the sermon was about the soils, i.e. us, and the state of our hearts. It was a good sermon, and there were wonderful points. But somehow Jesus got lost in it.
Jesus is the point of it all. It’s what Jesus said: “It is the Scriptures that testify of Me, but you will not come to Me.” Systematic theology and mandated expository preaching can easily become legalistic barriers to coming to Christ Himself. I’d take a topical sermon that tells me about Jesus long before an expository, “mico-exegetical” sermon that misses out on Jesus.

I’ll flesh this out more in a later part of this series. Meanwhile, be sure to read or re-read this article by Michael Spencer.