Parabolic Expositional Preaching: The Arc and the Throughline

Sep 2, 2025

Heath Hardesty, Lead Pastor of Valley Community Church and coffee shop founder, shares insights on parabolic expositional preaching. He emphasizes the journey of awakening spiritual thirst and points to Christ as the living water. Listeners will learn about the significance of the Feast of Tabernacles and how it reflects God's provision. Hardesty discusses deep human longings for fulfillment and the importance of connecting scripture to everyday life. Through this enriching dialogue, he offers a compelling vision for impactful preaching that is both unified and spiritually fulfilling.

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INSIGHT

Thirst And The Water Of Life

Preaching must both awaken thirst and offer the water of life through Scripture.
Heath Hardesty says faithful preaching points listeners to Jesus from the text.

ADVICE

Hold A Clear Through-Line

Keep a single through-line in your sermon that repeats the core text like a chorus.
Use that repetition to maintain coherence and guard against scattered, buckshot preaching.

INSIGHT

Arc Plus Through-Line

Pair the through-line with an 'arc' that moves listeners from existential ache to gospel healing.
Use hyperlinks (intertextual links) to weave the immediate passage into the grand story of redemption.

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Preaching, says Heath Hardesty, should do more than explain a passage of Scripture - it should take listeners on a journey that awakens thirst and points them to the living water of Christ. In this session, recorded at Valley Community Church in Pleasanton, California, Hardesty unpacks how the “arc” and the “through-line” of expository preaching bring sermons into harmony with the larger story of redemption.

Drawing from John 7:37–39, he demonstrates how faithful exposition stirs a Spirit-given sense of need and satisfies the soul’s ache in the gospel. The teaching weaves together theology, cultural insight, and pastoral wisdom, offering a vision of preaching that is unified, Spirit-led, and Christ-centred.

About Heath Hardesty
Heath Hardesty serves as Lead Pastor of Valley Community Church in Pleasanton, CA, and is a founder of Inklings Coffee & Tea in the heart of downtown Pleasanton. He grew up in a blue-collar home and was a plumber’s apprentice in Colorado before becoming a pastor on the edge of Silicon Valley, where he, his wife, and their four children now reside. Heath holds degrees in literature, leadership, biblical studies, and theology from the University of Colorado Boulder and Western Seminary in Portland.

His forthcoming book, All Things Together: How Apprenticeship to Jesus Is the Way of Flourishing in a Fragmented World (with a foreword by Jon Tyson), will be released October 14, 2025.

Pre-Order Heath's Book Here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/776336/all-things-together-by-heath-hardesty/

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