Just a few short years ago you couldn't turn on an NBA or WNBA basketball game without seeing players wearing WWJD bracelets apparently concerned about whether or not Jesus would hit the jumper, drive the lane, or most likely pass to His teammates, since He's such a nice guy. The WWJD idea came from a classic devotional "In His Steps," written by Charles Sheldon, reminding us to consider Jesus in the midst of our decision making. A noble effort, but flawed in some sense. After all, are we all supposed to remain single, wear robes and sandals and all become peripatetic preachers like some Franciscan monk?

While the "Emerging" church has taken their sarcastic shots at the marketed cheesiness of the ploy, they themselves have looked to Jesus for their cue in preaching. We are told by many newer preaching books that we should stay away from expositional preaching and turn to a narrative (Story telling) methodology like Jesus did when He preached in parables. This isn't much different than looking to Jesus as the "Seeker" model churches when they see in Jesus' "Irrefutable" leadership qualities that make Him more of a CEO than a savior.

Now it is important to note that Jesus did speak most often in pithy sayings, and parables, so the question is should we? This question is quite relevant, but if we are to truly speak in story and parable as Jesus did, then we must at least do so for the same reason He did. It is quite popular for teachers to train young pastors in the art of storytelling (With some actually advocating that we lessen the importance of preaching, making it equal with other disciplines like singing, in spite of being told to "Preach the word; 2 Timothy 4:1), but they are not usually taught that the method was used by Christ to hide His message from those that were not enlightened to understand His message (see Matthew 13:11-17). It was not used as a rhetorical device to make His message clearer to an otherwise deaf audience. Paul says himself that the message of the gospel is the "Power of God for salvation to the Jew first and then to the Greek," and that his preaching was "foolishness to those that were perishing, but to those who were being saved, the power of God". Preaching is powerful, and its power comes from the clear teaching of God's word, and the power of the Holy Spirit working in conjunction with the heart of the hearer, and the power of the word of God (see John 16). It was the ears that were opened by God that could hear the message of Christ (Matthew 13:43) that was important, not the story being told.
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So are we to preach like Jesus, or are we to preach Jesus, and "Explain" His teachings so that He can be worshipped as a result? It seems that the disciples didn't preach in story, except the fact they explained and told the story of what Jesus did and said; primarily that He was crucified and resurrected in order to glorify His Father and recreate us in His image. My fear is that many emerging or missional church books seem to downplay the importance of preaching the word, for the sake of story, because that's how people hear or understand the message, but much of the narrative I hear seems to be large in story (And its ability to elicit feeling), and short on bible. In the days of Nehemiah and Ezra the people were in exile, and had been deprived of their language and religious customs, and had little knowledge of scripture (a lot like our climate today) and if any time was ripe to tell stories it was then since the people had lost contact and context with the OT scriptures, but when they found the scriptures they didn't tell stories, they "Explained the scriptures so the people could understand them" (Nehemiah 8:7-8). The result of that preaching was that people worshipped God, which should always be the result of biblical preaching. Worship comes in response to who God is, not as an emotional connection to our feelings or experiences. Don't get me wrong, affections and emotions should be part of our Christian experience, but I believe that teaching the scriptures is paramount to that affection and experience. I believe that our faith should be experiential and affective, but our affections and emotions should come from the deep root of who God is, and what He has done. Whereas story may be a powerful tool to accent a point, and even communicate deeper truths to less cerebral cultures, we need to go through the scriptures verse by verse explaining its meaning, and connecting the parts to its close and greater context, in order to bring out the meaning intended by the author, instead of our own meaning. It is the discovery and subsequent communication of that meaning that is imperative for us as preachers, and I believe that expository preaching is the best way to exact that truth, and communicate it clearly within its context.

In Luke, we see a similar thing on the road to Emmaus, when Jesus "Explains" the scriptures to them, which also resulted in a "Burning" (Worshipful) heart. Paul exhorts Timothy to read the scriptures publicly and exhort the people with them and teach them (1 Timothy 4:13), and in Romans Paul reminds us that there is no salvation without hearing the gospel, and there is no hearing the gospel without preaching (Romans 10:9-10).
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In a culture that is looking for experiences it is not ok to give them the experience without the effectual cause of that experience. Subsequently we see a proliferation of the "Worship" movement, so that people can feel, and experience Christ, without knowing who that Christ is. Once again, I would like to reiterate, I believe that biblical preaching should always end in love and deep passion for Christ, and the emotions that accompany such passion, but it should be as a result of knowing God through the understanding of His word, and not a most often manipulative, emotional experience. One author I recently read used a modern parable to explain that a tribal group chanting one verse can substitute for preaching. One missionary responds in his parable, "but it was not a sermon, at least, not the kind he was used to hearing-The leader didn't explain the bible. The older missionary answered, "The Holy Spirit can do that.'" Whereas that is most certainly true, it appears that the bible calls teachers to explain the meaning of scripture, and that good teachers are worth double the wages (1 Timothy 5). There are many obscurantist groups that claim they only need the Holy Spirit in their sermons, and misquote 1 John 2:27 to prove it, but give horrendously out of context sermons that center on man and his needs instead of God and His glory. Even Apollos who was "Mighty in the word" still needed Priscilla and Aquila to teach and explain the scriptures to him (Acts 18:24-26). We are called to worship God in "Spirit and truth," not one without the other, and for some reason God chose to write His words on papyri and cuneiform, and ultimately saw to it in His sovereignty that it would be translated in many languages, so that we could have the bible today. It is teachers that are worth "Double honor," not music directors, administrators or community group leaders, which seem like the three areas many churches feel should be most emphasized in our American churches today. The above mentioned author also inferred that verse by verse explanations of scripture were not really seen in the scripture, but I do not believe that we have a lot of their full sermons available to us to make that kind of judgment. Jesus preached on the mount for three days, and we have 5 minutes recorded in the bible. There is no doubt however that the disciples (Especially Paul) did set out to clearly explain and exegete Jesus to their culture, and to their problems that beset them at the time. We see Paul explaining grammatical nuances that were pertinent to the text in Galatians 3, where he makes it quite clear that the promises to Abraham were to his "Seed" (Singular not plural) when referring to his offspring, indicating that it was a particular seed that he was being promised. This is Paul clearly taking the text and explaining it to his people so that they would be clear as to what the gospel was, since there was obvious false gospels and false Christ's being taught in his time, as it is in our time. Also the book of Hebrews (Which I believe might be the only set of sermons recorded in its entirety in the NT) does a masterful job of explaining and bringing out the historical connections of the Old Testament texts he is using, and in doing so shows us how those texts were preaching Christ hundreds of years before.
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We cannot throw out a diligent, exegetical study of whole scriptures that include intense grammatical and historical research because our postmodern climate demands that we do. We must remove it however from its dead, liberal enlightenment roots, and capture a biblical preaching model that is thorough, informational, contextual, passionate and life transforming. We still need to do our work exegeting the text and the culture, and connect it to its proper place within its context, or else we will fall into gross error of self interpretation, creating bogus doctrines like the word of faith trash, and fall in to heinous errors such as black people are cursed with the curse of Ham.

Another important thing to remember about Jesus' preaching is Jesus' exegesis and preaching authority was primary and not derivative. We preach and derive our authority from God's revelation, and the words of Jesus. Our job is to explain and proclaim Christ, not create new understandings of God that Christ hasn't already revealed. We preach Christ crucified, and are not to add to revelation something that isn't already there. Our prophecy and words of knowledge are forth-telling, not fore-telling. We don't know anything that isn't already revealed to us. Christ spoke from experience, we speak with His authority, not our own. Subsequently we are to train people in who Christ is, and what He has done for us, and that teaching should end in loving God, and loving others more, as we are brought into the throne room of God, and experience His throne from the inside out, not as a result of emotionalism that is stirred up artificially.

My prayer is that we don't throw the baby out with the bath water as the first reformation tended to do, but instead of the knee jerk reactions which often accompany changing movements, I pray that we diligently pray, study, love God, and deliver messages that are clear and explained in such a way that our people are struck with its message and confronted with God's truth on a weekly basis. So tell your stories, and show your movie clips, but let's subordinate them to the power of God's word, and give the Holy Spirit something to work with.