I invite you to plunge the depths of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John while keeping your eye on the interaction between Jesus and his disciples. He did not teach them to form three-point sermons, practice in-depth linguistic studies, nor did he teach them exegetical methods. These methods and tools used in the pulpit today come from highly school theologians. People like Martin Luther and John Calvin came to the pulpit, developing and using these methods and tools.

 

These things are an outcome of modern traditions. After all, we reason how people need to know what, in order to know why.

 

Jesus came close to using these methods when he reasoned with the lawyers and Pharisees in John’s Gospel. However, when he talked with the crowds, they would have vanished if he talked in the rings of higher snootiness. He did not put these things to work. When I poured the teachings of Jesus into a filter based on style, I found out how, without exception, Jesus told stories when he taught the crowds.

 

And they kept coming back. Paul certainly used higher forms of disputation in his writings. But look at what he taught, look at what Peter, John, and Matthew taught. Peter’s sermon on Pentecost in Acts two is lifted up as the penultimate exegetical method which a pastor should model. Yes, he supported his claims with Old Testament prophesies, but look closer. The real sermon is not his defense of the wild tongues speaking and flames of fire from prophecy. 

 

Peter told a story in Acts 2:22-24 then again in 29-36. The method the Disciples learned from Jesus was storytelling. Why? Because the telling of an oral story with facial expressions, hand movements, is able to trip your emotional triggers into making you think. 

 

From this finding, I researched oral storytelling for my Doctoral Thesis, and I continue to tell oral stories because they grip hearts and move minds to think. I am not talking about manipulating emotions with syrupy sweet contrived stories which cause tears. I am talking about earth-shaking real stories which make us think!