Question of the day ??
How many of you use a lot of movie illustrations in your sermons? Or if you don't preach, the question goes for your pastor.
What about book illustrations?
What about what my preaching professor called canned illustrations, you know, things like the stories that are always emailed to everyone?
What about personal illustrations?
To sum it all up, where do the best illustrations come from?
posted by Greg Hazelrig @ 7:16 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I don't preach (except to my teenagers...hehe), but our pastor is big on sports analogies.
I do use movie imagery in my sermons from time to time. Of course, doing such gives me an opportunity to do impressions - which I enjoy probably more than anyone watching me.
I think the best stuff, though, comes from the pastor telling stories from his or her own childhood - especially stories about screwing something up or getting in trouble. It triggers everyone's network of similar experiences, elicits good laughs, and speaks to our connectedness.
Personal stories for the most part about 98%. I might use a sports analogy, movie analogy, or book analogy in an article for the newsletter. But for the most part I use stories out of my own life. (Specific enough to tell the story, generic enough so the people won't know details that might cause harm to others.)
I do tend to do personal stories as well. I love sports analogies (being a sports fan), but understand that many people are not sports fans. I like movie illustrations also. My favorite comes from the movie "The Mission".
Our senior pastors generally use personal illustrations. Our associate is a bit more hip and routinely references movie, tv, and music. (One Easter he did a whole series of sermons, complete with a skit at the start of each one, titled CSI: Jeuserulem) Obviously, he mostly does the contempoary service.
I mostly use personal stories. Since we don't have any projection capability, there's no use to a movie illustration.
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