A Preacher's Tale: Explorations in Narrative Preaching

Many clergy receive little training in the arts of preaching and it is assumed that they will learn by gaining experience. The renowned American preacher Herbert O’Driscoll suggests that congregations do not want to be given a map showing them how to get to the coast, they want to be drenched in the spray. Narrative preaching is a means of achieving such immediacy. By dramatic story-telling, it invites listeners in to enter the text imaginatively and enables them to experience sermons as transformative events. This book aims to provide not just a theoretical introduction, but a resource that uses sermons in the narrative style to reflect on how to prepare and construct them and how to deliver them effectively in the context of worship.

Jon Russell is a parish priest in Northumberland. For the past ten years he has taught narrative preaching, firstly as part of Reader Training in the Diocese of Newcastle; then, since its inception, as part of the Lindisfarne Regional Training Partnership, training readers and ordinands in the dioceses of Newcastle and Durham. He is a regular contributor to The Preacher magazine.