If God inspired a story, why don’t we preach it as a story? Simple question. Sometimes we think stories are for the flannel-graph in the children’s Sunday School room. But in church, to adults, we don’t tell stories. Perhaps we summarize the story and then get down to preaching our points – lessons derived from and illustrated by the text. Or we dissect the story and preach a protruding skeletal outline that makes our points as we work through the text.
Maybe we should tell the story? When faced with a Biblical story, in very basic terms, the default approach might be a simple three steps. 1. Tell the story. 2. State the main idea of the story. 3. Apply the main idea. There are many other approaches that might be worth considering, but consider this one first. Story – Principle – Application.
Allow the dynamics of a story to work, even for adults. After all, God inspired it as a story . . . and it was written for adults.
Peter has responded to comments on this post.
Biblical Preaching 
Can you provide or point to an audio or video example of this?
Stephen, I’m sorry I don’t have a suggestion for a simple example of this right now. Often preachers follow the modified version of this approach that Sherman mentions below. In simple terms, though, it is not hard to imagine.
For example, perhaps you were preaching the Good Samaritan. After the introduction, you could tell the story using good description and explanation. Having completed the story, the principle has become clear. Haddon Robinson states it as, “Your neighbor is anyone whose need you see, whose need you are able to meet.” Then you could move on to application. Where might this principle be applied today? A person with a flat tire beside the road, a single Mom in your church or street who would be helped by babysitting, and further afield – what about the desperately poor whose need we see on TV, or the Dalits needing help to find freedom in India, or the millions who could be reached with the gospel if only more people and funds were sent? The applications can go on and on, but the preacher has to identify the best approach for that particular congregation. Perhaps the church is in a needy neighborhood and yet the people act oblivious to the need since they commute in on a Sunday? Anyway, there’s a written example. Tell the story so people understand the passage, highlight the main point of the story, then apply the main point in relevant terms. If I come up with a simple audio or video example of this, I’ll let you know. Perhaps someone else has a link to hand that might fit this description?
Stories and narratives are a staple in the African American Preaching Tradition. What I see often done is for a preacher to preach a part of the story and then pull out points from each part of the story. and apply those points as the story progresses, kind of as an aside. The story goes forward and from each major step of the story a practical point is extracted and applied before moving on…
Some are better than others in this process. Sometimes the preachers will “add to” the text rather than seeing what is in the text using this method. However, I think it is a valuable thing to try as well…So that would look like:
1. Part of the story
2. Extract Point from that Part
3. Apply point from that part
4. Next Part of the story
5. Extract Point from that Part
6. Apply point from that part.
7. etc…and so on…
Yes, the three part approach I suggested can be used in this way with a story. Story-Principle-Application then another set of Story-Principle-Application for the next movement in the story, and so on. This approach is particularly helpful with a longer story, or a story with sub-plots in it. Of course, there are always pros and cons. One pro is that the listeners don’t have to wait so long for the relevance of application. One con is that there is a danger of moralizing an element of a story rather than centering on the actual point of the story.
It is important for the preacher to exegete the whole narrative and understand it as a whole before drawing out possible sub-principles and applications from parts of the story. Again, this underlines the importance of full passage study before message preparation. It is easy for us preachers to cut corners and get to the message more directly, but we have a responsibility to really understand the passage first.