Illustration Variation

Be careful that you don’t get stuck in a rut with your illustration material.  Here are some favourites that preachers sometimes find themselves repeating:

1. Sports – it may be your favourite team, or the sport you played in college, or sport in general, but remember, there are people listening who don’t relate to sport in general, and even more to your sport in particular. Variation needed.

2. Stats – some preachers love nothing more than a statistic. Barna surveys get lots of attention. Again, some people appreciate stats, but others can’t connect with them at all. Variation needed.

3. Anecdotes/Quotes – you might be one of those preachers that loves nothing more than dipping into your stash of Churchill quotes, or General Lee anecdotes, or Bono lyrics, or whatever. It can all seem a bit distant. Variation needed.

4. Movies – some preachers love to tie their message to some scene from the big screen. I won’t get into the complexity of citing movies here, just to say that some people won’t appreciate a constant flow of movie quotes and references. Variation needed.

5. Family – your family is a constant source of illustrative material, but it may not be wise to use too much of that great store. For one thing your family might appreciate not being the focus. For another, there will be people listening who feel an inner pang at a steady stream of marriage stories or children stories. Variation needed.

Maybe you have another rut, or maybe you have struggled listening to another rut.  None of these are bad sources of illustrations, just be sure to vary it for the sake of your listeners.

Peter Mead is mentor at Cor Deo and author of several books. This article first appeared at his blog Biblical Preaching.