Reader Recommendation: Preaching the Story: How to Communicate God’s Word Through Narrative Sermons, by Jeffrey W. Frymire
Recommended by: Esther Robles
Why it might be helpful: This is a great resource for those looking to perfect their storytelling aspects and not just for narrative preaching. Frymire used to be my preaching seminary professor and students were at awe in his delivery. This book outlines some key aspects to this method of preaching.

Preaching the Story offers a focused, accessible guide to narrative preaching — not just as a homiletical method, but as a way of understanding how story functions in human meaning-making and what that means for proclamation. Frymire draws on his decades of teaching and preaching to outline the key elements of narrative sermon construction, including how to shape plot, develop tension, and move a congregation toward an encounter with the gospel through the arc of a story well told.

Recommender Esther Robles makes an important point: the book is useful even for preachers who do not regularly preach in a purely narrative form. Its insights into how storytelling works — and how to handle it with skill and theological intentionality — apply to any sermon that uses narrative as a primary vehicle for the word. For preachers whose congregations respond to story, this is a foundational text.

Check it out

You might also find helpful:

• Preaching Luke-Acts, by Ronald J. Allen — A Disciples scholar’s guide to the theological themes and homiletical possibilities of Luke and Acts.
• Preaching God’s Grand Drama — Ahmi Lee’s theodramatic framework for biblical preaching, a Preacher Book Club selection.
• Legacy Preaching Series — Video interviews on compelling preaching with renowned African American preachers, hosted by Dr. Frank Thomas.

Reader Recommendations are submitted by Disciples preachers and are not created or fully reviewed by the Proclamation Project.