Determining What It is You are Doing Up There

“For example, most books on preaching operate on the common assumption that sermonic organization evolves out of the logic of content . . . Truth is, to continue our example, a sermon is not a doctrinal lecture. It is an event-in-time, a narrative art form more akin to a play or novel in shape than to a book. Hence we are not engineering scientists, we are narrative artists by professional function . . . our best preaching does in fact feel like a story. It is indeed The Story, and our task is to tell it” (Lowry, The Homiletical Plot, pp. xix-xx)