These spiritual truths do not disregard the power of story, but they do challenge the presuppositions that would make its use exclusive or preeminent in preaching. Much of what the modern theorists have written about the techniques and effects of storytelling may be fruitfully used in the illustrative features of traditional expository sermons. Dispensing with stories in such sermons is both insensitive to culture and unbiblical in pattern, but dispensing with propositional truth is even more dangerous to biblical faith. Expository preaching will persist because propositional truth does.
Replacing the narrative tide is a new wave of advocates for expository methods. With a wink to Mark Twain, we can safely report that the death of expository preaching was greatly exaggerated. As any scan of recent textbooks from Evangelical publishers will attest, expository preaching is again the rage.3 These recent books are only adding to the healthy ongoing sales of established expository advocates such as Haddon Robinson, Sidney Greidanus, Charles Koller, Stephen Olford, Jay Adams, Jerry Vines and others. Yet, even these significant homiletics texts may not be the best indication of the kind of preaching most prevalent among North America's Evangelicals. The greatest indicator of the strength of our commitment to expository preaching is the remarkably consistent sale of the hosts of exegetical tools and commentaries. Our commitment to saying what the text says is strong and encouraging.
By citing this continuing emphasis on expository methods I do not mean to imply that our methods are, or should be, entirely unchanged in this new millennium. The expository method as we practice it (codified by John Broadus 150 years ago) remains relatively new in the history of preaching. We ought not to think that we have nothing new to learn about this approach or other approaches to proclaiming the truths of God's eternal Word. Contemporary advocates of expository methods are profitably employing the insights of narrative theology in the way that illustrations are used, and in the way that sermons are structured more closely to reflect the narrative form of many texts. The Bible is three-quarters narrative (including historical accounts, parables and imagistic references) and the narrative theorists clearly have given us new tools to interpret and relate this biblical material. What keeps adaptations of these narrative insights expository (and biblical) is the preacher's commitment accurately and comprehensively to communicate the truths of the text with the presupposition that these truths are normative and transcendent. Thus, an expositor may with biblical integrity substitute a homiletical "move" for a traditional main point, or follow an inductive order to a propositional conclusion, or create a personal address to communicate a biblical character's perspective. Still the emphasis is on what the biblical author means to say, not on what the biblical reader determines the text to mean.