When you are preaching the Gospel, you need various tools to help you understand the Biblical text. As noted in other places on this site and others, you should never begin your preparation looking at these tools, however, you should always ensure that your preaching is in line with what is truth.
[amazon cover 0801057574]One of the important components of effective preaching is to help the congregation experience the sermon in as many sense as possible, not just hear the sermon. This book by Warren Wiersbe entitled Preaching and Teaching with Imagination provides an apologetic for using the imagination in preaching.
The final step to preaching a sermon that effectively tells a story is to Practice.
Record yourself telling the story. Then transcribe the story from the tape into a manuscript. This practice will improve your storytelling and your preaching in general.
The next step in preaching an effective sermon that makes use of stories is to decide what details that you collected from steps 1 and 2 are useful to help the preacher fulfill the purpose found in step 3.
In short, the preacher should determine the feelings and the sensory data that are needed to preach a “15-25” minute sermon.
The third step in Martha Simmons and Henry Mitchell’s method for improving storytelling in preaching is the turning point towards putting together the sermon. Here you must determine the behavioral purpose of the sermon. You get this by asking yourself, What change in core belief or obedience is the Passage pushing the people to.