Effective Storytelling for Preaching

with Rev. Scott E. Hoezee

Show, Don’t Tell: Story-Driven Preaching in Hyper-Partisan Times

In a moment when a sentence that sounded like a whisper in 1995 can land like a partisan shout in 2025, Rev. Scott Hoezee makes the case for narrative as the preacher’s most unifying tool. Drawing on Jesus’ parables, the “show, don’t tell” craft of storytellers, and decades of homiletics, he explains how vivid, concrete stories can slip past hardened categories so people actually hear, and feel, the gospel.

Rev. Hoezee walks through practical moves: swap abstractions for scenes, use first-person voices, imagine the acoustics of a text (John 14 spoken through a trembling chin), and lace sermons with memorable specifics (orange Crocs, a blue Dodge with rusted rocker panels, a casserole on the porch). He anchors it all in Paul Scott Wilson’s “Four Pages”, naming real trouble and showing real grace, so congregations recognize God’s work again on Wednesday afternoon, not just on Sunday.

Highlights:

• Why this is hard now: In today’s “attenuated acoustics,” even quoting Jesus can be labeled political; pastors report the room hears everything through partisan amps.
• Why story works: We’re storied creatures; Jesus taught in parables. The new homiletic invites shared experience and narrative (from children’s tales like Winnie-the-Pooh and The Runaway Bunny to long-arc TV and podcasts).
• Show, don’t tell: Don’t assert “Jesus is good”. Show it. Use lived scenes (e.g., “Aunt Millie” drawing the lonely into the circle) and literary models (To Kill a Mockingbird shows Atticus’ goodness without ever stating it).
• Make it vivid: First-person dialogue, imagined tone, and concrete detail, the freckled kid in a red-striped shirt and orange Crocs; the blue Dodge with rust; the Merlot reduction on the potatoes. Help people see the truth.
• Trouble & grace (Four Pages):
  • Trouble in the world: aging parents, loneliness, dashed hopes (think About Schmidt and the dumpstered files).
  • Grace in the world: “God-glimpses” in everyday scenes: the rehabbed block that looks like Easter, a surprise tuna-casserole on the doorstep, Christ “among the pots and pans.”
• Pastoral practices: Collect congregational testimonies, train yourself to hunt details, tell stories people can recognize mid-week, and let narrative gather a divided room around shared human experience.