Illustrate or perish
Have you ever sat through a lecture or talk in the ‘graveyard shift’ after lunch? As you fight the urge to sleep, and struggle to stay with the speaker, their voice becomes a distant drone and lullaby, until at the last you succumb. Alas, the thoroughly researched material or careful exegesis is lost to all but the most determined souls in the room. Hmmm.
This page’s title insists that without well-timed illustrative material in our preaching, we the preacher, our poor hearers, and our sermon, will ‘perish.’ Our careful exegesis and well-structured sermons will be lost to hearers who’ve been subjected to a ‘graveyard shift’ sermon regardless of the time of day; and even the most devout hearer who stays with us in spite of us, will be robbed of the depth of understanding and the aid to memory that good illustrations bring.
It is our hope that you will read on and heed this challenge; and if you do illustrate, we hope that you will be encouraged to work even harder at it.
Why illustrate?
1. Think of illustrations as the windows of the sermon. They let light in. Illustrations help explain what a point means, bringing clarity to the truth. In fact, finding the right illustration helps the preacher to ensure that they have understood the point!
2. In this way illustrations reinforce explanations and in ways that make the point memorable.
3. Going even further, through a story the hearer can experience the Bible’s truth and therefore bring deeper understanding and learning. This is especially true for adults. Adult education experts state that adults learn best through active involvement and participation, and that learning needs to be related to real life issues and situations. A real life story that illuminates your point and that your hearers can identify with has great value. It can keep your hearers’ attention, give relief from straight explanation, clarify and aid real learning, reveal your humanity (especially if the story involves you and your weaknesses), and speak to your hearers’ hearts and move their wills.
4. Illustrations and stories can also help show how the point you are making applies to your hearers. Illustrations that do this save valuable time for other things in the sermon or for you to sit down earlier!
Dangers
1. When the illustration or story is so vivid or shocking or mesmerizing that your hearers only remember the illustration, or they keep thinking about it when you’ve moved on.
2. Having too many illustrations or stories that replace rather than support explanation, so that your sermon lacks substance and God’s truth is obscured. A good guide is to have one illustration for every point or major movement in the text.
3. Including too much or unnecessary detail, obscuring the point of the illustration and making it too long.
4. Using illustrations that miss the mark in terms of their suitability for the people you’re preaching to or their usefulness in illustrating the point.
5. Giving inaccurate information or facts that annoy and distract people, and undermine their confidence in the rest of what you say.
Types of illustration
1. Stories
People LOVE stories. It’s been said that parable, anecdotes and storytelling are the most powerful form of communication, because the audience is most easily able to project itself right into the story. It shouldn’t surprise us then that 75% of the Bible is narrative and 75% of Jesus’ teachings are illustrative. In fact, the whole of the Bible taken together is one grand story: God’s story about God and his Son and his eternal Kingdom; and this story speaks powerfully to us in our fallen human condition. The Bible therefore models the importance of using stories in our preaching as well as providing a wealth of narrative material that can be used illustratively.
Your own life experiences can work well, especially if the story is against yourself rather than promoting yourself (Australians love that). This reveals your humanity and resonates with them and reassures them that their experiences are normal. This requires us preachers to be aware of life’s every day occurrences and their potential to illustrate the Bible. Funny, frustrating, frightening and bizarre things that happen to you can work well. For example, this writer’s recent walk in beautiful City Park, Launceston, on a sunny Sunday afternoon suddenly turned scary when two men appeared from nowhere and appeared to be ready to mug me….that moment in City Park is a picture of life in this world: it is beautiful and dangerous and can very quickly turn nasty.
Another important reason to be using our own experiences and life story in our preaching is that Postmodern people (especially Generation Y = under 30s) hold authenticity as a high value. They want to know if something is real before knowing if it is true. We preachers need to embody the truth in our lives and preaching, especially in personal stories, personal testimony and illustrations. Of course this can also be done in drama and song. In addition, Postmoderns prefer narrative over bald propositions. They will find it easier to listen not only when we share ourselves in a personal way, but when we locate our story within the Bible’s story, God’s metanarrative; and within this story, the stories of Jesus and the stories Jesus told can hold particular interest.
Other peoples’ experiences can work well, too. If the people are known to your hearers make sure that you get their permission first!
Other rich sources of stories are biographies, books, newspapers, magazines, movies and television, the internet, missionary newsletters.
2. Observations from life
This is in the same vein as stories of things that happen to you or others. Preachers should be keen observers of life, people, things and incidents. Even mundane happenings or scenarios be they at the supermarket checkout or in a dentist’s waiting room, can helpfully illustrate biblical truth with life observations that are interesting and readily understood by your hearers. For example, we could transport our hearers to a busy supermarket checkout. They’ve just swiped their card and punched in their pin number. There’s a long line of impatient customers queued behind them. For those few seconds you have to wait for the transaction to be approved, do you sometimes feel a little anxiety? Have I got my pin number right? Is there enough money in the account? When the screen says ‘Declined’, your heart sinks and you feel mild panic; when it says ‘Approved,’ you are quietly relieved and reassured. Have you stopped to think that all of life can be like that for the unbeliever: will I be approved by others, by God? Do I have what it takes? Have I got things right? By contrast the Christian already knows that they are approved by God; what wonderful reassurance and relief this brings every day of our life…
3. Quotations and one-liners
If someone has said something that has been published, then you can repeat it without having to attribute it. But if it’s a significant source you should attribute it to its source. Quotes and one-liners can be funny, moving, or memorable. For example,
‘Lord, help me be the man my dog thinks I am.’
‘Never doubt in the dark what you have learnt in the light.’
‘If you cannot trace God’s hand, you can always trust God’s heart.’ (C H Spurgeon)
4. Biblical images, metaphors and similes
The Bible is rich with these and many of them are vivid and memorable, for example,
God refers to idolatrous Israel as an unfaithful whore
God’s salvation is spoken of among other things as redemption and rescue
Proclaiming the gospel is like sowing seed
The church is likened to a human body, a temple, a bride
Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd, the light of the world, the bread of life
Following Jesus requires taking up a cross daily
A nagging wife is likened to a dripping tap! (Now you know this writer is a male!)
5. Other sources of illustrative material
Poetry and music, photographs, pictures, visual aids, the natural world, science, statistical data and studies.
Tips for collecting illustrative material
• Carry with you a small notebook or device for writing down potential illustrations, lest you forget 90% of it by the time you get home!
• Keep a growing file of alphabetically arranged illustrations, quotes, etc. that can be kept under headings such as ‘Redemption’, ‘Sin’, ‘Trust’, ‘Assurance.’
• Keep a growing file of newspaper and magazine clippings, funny or quotable junk mail, odds and ends.
• Keep a growing computer file of images, photos, maps, graphs, video clips, etc., that can be used in a PowerPoint slideshow during the sermon.
• Keep notes taken from sermons you have heard, filed under the biblical book or theme or topic, highlighting helpful illustrations used.
• Keep your eyes and ears open, always and everywhere!