How to Preach a Parable: Designs for Narrative Sermons. By Eugene L. Lowry. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989. 173 pages.  

For a decade now, a determined group of homileticians has been urging preachers to try narrative sermons. Over that same decade, preachers trained in other methods have been asking how anyone but a skilled story-teller can do narrative sermons. Eugene L. Lowry has enlisted some friends to help him answer that question.  

Lowry, professor of preaching at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, offers some introductory remarks, then presents narrative sermons from Fred B. Craddock, Leander E. Keck, and Dennis M. Willis, in addition to one of his own.  

In the early portion of the book, Lowry defines narrative sermons as those that follow a sequence of “opening conflict, escalation, reversal, and proleptic closure.” This need not require the sermon to be a long story or a series of stories; so long as the sequence is there, the sermon is narrative, he argues.  

Lowry writes virtually a paragraph by paragraph analysis of what gives the sample sermons their effect. He sets forth options preachers have in the construction of narrative messages and guides preachers in choosing among those options.  

How to Preach a Parable does one of the best jobs to date of giving a nuts and bolts approach to a type of sermon many preachers find baffling. Preachers who are ready to experiment with narrative preaching but unsure where to begin will find this book quite helpful.