As pastors, we struggle with the ability to present the message of a particular passage in a way that our people will hear and remember after the preaching event has concluded. I have found that a sermon, written and preached in story form, can accomplish both of those goals. The reason this works is that our lives are full of story. Television, movies, commercials and even the way we describe the events of our days use the story form. Of course Jesus was a master of this form. It allows the preacher to take a particular bit of wisdom that was set in a distant time and place and transport it into a modem setting in a way that allows the Holy Spirit to use it to speak to events and situations in the hearer’s everyday life. While it probably would not be the main form that a preacher would want to employ, it can be a very effective and powerful tool in helping connect the message of a particular Scripture passage to a modem setting and then storing that message in people’s minds for the Holy Spirit to draw on later as events and situations in their everyday lives require that particular message.
