SCL

No points for an out cold pastor? Dewd, you're harsh. I'd pay to see that.

My most favorite illustration was given by a pastor that kept referencing Bono from U2. But he pronouced it "Bo-No" (like Sunny Bono). I was sitting in the 3rd row, so I HAD to contain myself. The beauty is, it comes up in conversation every once in awhile and we all giggle.

Two sermon illustrations that I heard in high school that scarred me for life:

One was about a little boy who picked up some baby worms to go fishing with, except they go were actually baby rattlesnakes that bit him and he died.

The other was about a kid who gets in with a bad crowd who convinces him to
assault a couple on a date, and the girl ends up being his sister. Ick.

I have no idea if either of those stories are true, and I don't remember anything about the actual message. Traumatizing sermon illustrations have to be worth major negative points. And I'm pretty sure they were both given by guest speakers, probably horrifying the pastor who invited them to speak.

Ah, the boiling frog-one of the favorites of my high school pastor!

You are like my daily dose of whatever it is I seem to need (think harder/deeper about stuff, reflect on life……today I needed to laugh.

Ding ding.

You did it!

Good stuff!

Our pastor spent a lot of time in Bush Alaska before he was our pastor. He told a story of when his little kid(who is an adult in the congregation) ran up to him saying "Dad! Dad! so-and-so is in trouble in the outhouse! So the pastor assumed, he just needed some help with the paperwork. He goes in and the kid is hanging from the seat by his feet and fingers. He really was in trouble! This had to be one of the most memorable stories my pastor told. There was an application for it, but naturally i forgot

Thank you Jon for introducing me to Matt Chandler. King of awesome sermon illustrations. The first 10 minutes of this sermon made my guts hurt, I laughed so hard: http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/resource_files/audio/20060903CA01S_MattChandler_EcclesiastesPt07-ApproachingTheDivine.mp3

The best sermon illustration I've ever seen in person…. involved a literal column of salt. No idea how they got that behemoth moved into the church.

Our minister's sons were running wild last Sunday. They were bouncing around in front of the Praise Team. When she came up to give the sermon, she said she gets her ideas from her kids. And she was sure the fact that they spilled the grape juice for Communion all over the table had meaning to it. At Communion, she did work the puddles into God's overflowing grace. I was impressed at the illustration on the fly.

Komodo Dragon. Yes…I can see where you'd go with that…

Hey, my first day here, like it! I'll be back.

Looking forward to the book club, when's the next book starting and what is it? Or is that info coming in the near future? Thanks!

Betcha can't beat this one.

He put a coffee maker on the pulpit, explained how it worked, and then worked up to the conclusion: "God is the water, we are the beans."

Aside from driving home singing "We are the Beans" to the tune of "We are the World;" we spent the next day trying to figure out the illustration that managed to eclipse the rest of the sermon entirely.

We learned that day that the best illustrations are somewhat flawed; you chew over them over the ride home and for the next several weeks.

At our previous church, the sermons and illustrations were flawless. A work of art. We drove home discussing the hat Mrs. Brown was wearing, or the financial numbers in the bulletin.

An imperfect illustration is better than one that fits like a glove. The more rough edges, the better.

We are the beans.

lol at #19

So my word verification here is "DOERAVE". I was going to post something else but I couldn't pass this opprotunity up, with SCL having a throwback to electronic music a few days back…..

If your pastor can somehow get Deer into your church with awesome neon pants and get them to start dancing to holy electronica (wherever that comes from) … aka a doerave …

+ billiongajillioninfinity

Sorry folks I'm a random person

so many…#24 is so true! Only some of the illustrations I have heard are the same ones my mom heard in the 70's. lol One that was a favorite at my Bible college was when our president would sing about Ole Mose…he was a slave that was set free and he would intertwine it with an old hymn…another fave was the one about the missionary whose child was bitten by a snake in her crib and they woke up to find her dead but they never gave up so neither should we…

Unfortunately, #17 happened to me. I haven't stepped foot in a church since.

One of my favourite bible college lecturers, now promoted to glory, was a great preacher and master of those stories that get you laughing so hard that you lower your guard, and the truth suddenly comes through and skewers you. The real key is that they're not just funny stories, they're relevant to the truth they open the door for.
One of his best stories was the one that didn't work, which he used to make the point in a preaching class that you must always know where you're going with an illustration, and how you're going to make the transition from the story to the point.
He'd been asked to be a keynote speaker at a minister's conference, and a few days before, heard a great, and very funny, true story (sports related, so already in the points) and decided, although it wasn't directly related to his topic, to use it as his introduction because it was such a great story.
He stood up, and began to tell the story, getting the early laughs, connecting with the congregation, warming to his task, and suddenly realised he'd forgotten how the story ended. Being a master story teller, he figured he'd just pad the tale out until it came to him. 20 minutes later, it still hadn't come back and he had to sit down, not only without having given his message, but without even finishing his opening illustration. Lots of laughs, no sharp, penetrating truth – a cautionary tale to all us would be preachers – and the way he told it had us in stitches – shame he's not here to tell it to you himself.

I will be laughing about #14 for hours…maybe days to come.

nice work.

It's funny to me that there are people who prefer churches that don't have illustrations. But it just goes to prove God reaches us right where we are.

We actually opened a second campus for this purpose. Same message, same bulletin, same scripture references but two pastors that approach it differently.

Favorite Illustration: One of our teaching pastor's asked us to remember when we were first falling in love with our spouse and how everything reminds you of them. You see a rainbow and it spells their name. You pump gas and the fumes remind you of how intoxicating they are. blah, blah, bah … That's how much God loves us. Every second of everyday since the beginning of eternity He has been thinking of each of us. Cool.

The best sermon illustration I can think of was when one of the pastors at my old church actually made and cooked a cake during the sermon !!! It was a lemon drizzle cake, and the sermon was all about the ingredients required for living the Christian life, or something like that. Each ingredient used in the cake had an analogy.

We were all very impressed with the multi-tasking, and the fact that some of us got some free cake at the end of the service (which was actually really good!) (He also gave us the recipe along with the notes at the end!)

Unfortunately I can't now remember the specifics of what ingredient was supposed to represent what, but I do have some notes somewhere and it's one sermon I certainly won't forget in a hurry

We go to a church where, blessedly, the illustrations are always first person and current–it might be in the Statement of Faith as a requirement. My stance is that if you can't find daily, if not hourly application of Bible truth worthy of a sermon illustration in your very own life, then you aren't paying attention OR you are far too insulated from reality and have no business teaching other people. That being said (as I purse my lips and brush off my hands) a few weeks ago we had a guest speaker and he used a clip from the Man vs. Wild episode with Will Ferrell to illustrate our dependence on the Holy Spirit. I whispered to my husband, "Is Bear Grylls the Holy Paraclete in this little scenario?"

Years ago, my sister was visiting my church when the pastor decided to take grapes in his hand and squeeze them to illustrate Jesus body being crushed and blood being spilled. My sister enjoyed a nice spray of juice from the grapes.

This is totally make me think of the part in Churched where the Sunday School teacher burns a Barbie as an illustration of hell.

A few months back a guest preacher used the illustration of Billy graham asking to meet Marilyn Monroe shortly before she died, along with a few other sordid illustrations, all with the same theme, "God is not mocked," or something like that. I checked this story on Google when I got home, and found, first, all the illustrations he'd used together on the same web page, along with a refutation of each one. If I'd found the refutations of these illustrations so easily, why couldn't this pastor, instead of just copying them from the e-mail he got them from? -50 points for this guy.

i remember my pastor using Sumo wrestlers as an illustration..he got the 2 biggest guys in the church to dress up and actually perform a mock Sumo wrestling session before his sermon..was both funny and disturbing seeing those 2 huge guys in the sumo outfit.

Way too funny.

One time in Sunday school I remember they used the illustration of when you light a match, blow it out, put it in a vase with a thin neck of some sort, then proceed to put a hard boiled egg on the top opening part…and the egg eventually slides down through the way too skinny part and into the bottom of the vase/jar…
I have no idea what the message was on because I was too busy wondering how that just happened.

@katdish Someone should have stood up and said "WHAT! THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS! I got to go home NOW and find out who breaks into my house every Christmas Eve!"

In other words, why didn't you?

@Eric P – We had a similar thing at our church when the Pastor had a guy dress up as homeless man, and hang outside before the service, then about ten minutes in he came in to the church and stumbled down the aisle, which caused one of the old ladies in church to hit him with her handbag (awesomeness).

My Dad once had a quiz as part of his sermon illustration. He threw boiled sweets out into the congregation as prizes and hit a ninety-three year old woman right in the middle of her forehead.

I am so glad that someone else recognizes the power of Komodo Dragons (both as a story prop, and as an actual animal).

I went with my best friend to Best Buy once to get a new power cord for his computer, and the guy at the counter asked what happened to his other one. I jumped in swiftly to answer, "A komodo dragon ate it. It was brutal."

We also later wrote a song called "Panic on the Cattle Ranch!" which involved, guess what, a Komodo Dragon.

The uses just go on and on!

My favorite illustration was one an elderly associate pastor would use a high percentage of times when he spoke, but he didn't preach often, so it didn't seem overused. It was about a boy who carved a boat out of wood, but then lost it down the river. He's very upset and his dad gives him a dollar to take into town the next day to buy something to make him feel better (a large sum of money in those days). He's window shopping and spots the boat he made in a store, runs in and tells the clerk, "That's my boat!" The clerk informs him he bought it from someone, and if the boy wants it, it'll cost him a dollar. The boy pays with tears in his eyes, takes the boat outside and hugs it to his chest. He says, "Little boat, I love you. First I made you and now I bought you." Obviously, this is a picture of God's love for us: He made us then He bought us. I left out a lot of details here. It was always very moving when the old man told it to us.

Don't forget the multiple Lord of the Rings illustrations:

. . . sin is like the ring
. . . even Bilbo never lost his taste for the ring
. . . Gandalf was more powerful after he had died
. . . being chased by Nazgul
. . . what is manna? It's like Lembas bread.
. . . when Frodo was entirely hopeless, his friend Sam (whom he had rejected) came to rescue him. (This one only works for Calvinists)

Bonus points if they refer to something in the book that is not in the movie, i.e. scourging of the Shire, Tom Bombadil, etc.

Minus points if the pastor doesn't get permission for the name drop.

Double minus points when the illustration is unclear and causes listenerers to ask PKS embarassing clarifying questions i.e. "was your mom the live-in girlfriend, or was that someone else?"