Begin With the stories Under the Headline
Begin with the Stories Under The Headlines
We are in a series of posts considering how to go about preaching the headlines of the day. Here’s the first in the series. In this post we are going to look at a principle for doing this well: Begin with the stories under the headline to engage your congregation’s emotions. Note here that most studies about effective preaching indicate that when we touch peoples’ emotions, there will be better memory of the message, and greater impact. If you’d like to read more about this, check out this research article.
The Stories Under the Headlines
You will notice that this is a typical approach for news outlets. I always find it amazing that when there is a hurricane in the Bahamas, for instance, the local news station where I live finds somebody who is there that they interview on their broadcast.
The great part of this approach is that it connects your hearers with the emotions related to the stories. You see, when we try to communicate on the level of the facts, people can go away untouched and stay disconnected from your preaching. Study after study of preaching has indicated that one of the best ways for your sermon to have impact is to create emotion in your listeners.
There is a temptation, when trying to bring insight into what is happening in the broader culture, to begin with the headlines. You will be more effective if you begin with the stories under the headlines in your preaching.
An Example of Preaching Stories Under the Headlines
Here’s a headline that AI found for me: “City Doubles Number of Unsheltered Homeless After Severe Winter Storm.”
Let’s look at how we might build a sermon that would be an example of Begin with the stories under the headlines that we are considering as a first principle.
If you read the headline this week, you saw a number: twice as many people sleeping outside. But behind that number is a woman named Denise. She worked at the same grocery store for 18 years until her health failed. Her apartment complex was sold, rents doubled, and the storm forced her out of the shelter she depended on. Her story is not an anomaly—it is the lived reality beneath the headline.
The Story Under the Story
Starting with the lives behind the news, we discover something Scripture already knows: God pays attention to the people the world overlooks. God saw the suffering of the people of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness, and God saw their hunger and heard their cries. Jesus walked the crowded streets of Galilee. There He noticed the ones others stepped around—the blind man at the roadside, the woman who touched His cloak, the lepers calling out from a distance.
In Isaiah 58, God asks, “Is this not the fast I choose: to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house?” God does not read the headline—God sees Denise.
And when Jesus tells us in Matthew 25, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” He is not speaking in metaphor. He is telling us that faith is always embodied in how we attend to real people with real stories.
So the question before us this morning is not: What shall we think about the headline?
The question is: Whose cry do we hear behind it?
The Good News is that Jesus Christ not only sees those beneath the headline—He stands with them. And He invites His church to do the same. We can’t control the housing market. We can’t stop winter storms. But we can see. Caring can come from us. God’s people can act . We can refuse to let any person be reduced to a statistic.
Because the Gospel always moves toward people—one name, one story, one life at a time.
Conclusion
Do you get the idea? The big headlines in my world in the United States right now have to do with the need for peace in Ukraine, an end to the war in Gaza. What do those headlines say that might give you ideas to begin with the stories under the headlines?
