Pastors, how memorable are your sermons? You prepare your sermon by praying, determining the topic, then researching and studying the Bible passage. Then you craft your message for your congregation, but will they remember it?
Charles Spurgeon said sermon illustrations are like windows, they let the light in and illuminate your sermon. Your illustration will capture the attention of those listening, and by using an illustration for each point, you will keep it. A good illustration builds a bridge between biblical times and modern times. Sermon illustrations shed light on each of your main points and help you deliver a powerful message that your people will be able to apply to their lives.
In this episode of Hello Church! we talk about the importance of using Sermon Illustrations and how to use them to make your sermons memorable.
Chapter Markers
0:00 Introduction
2:02 Why are sermon illustrations important?
4:25 Mental Breaks
7:50 Giant Cow Tongue
12:25 Sermon Illustrations
17:05 Personal Testimonies
17:48 Biblical Analogies
18:42 Article
19:51 Poems
20:30 Illustration Ideas Bible
23:00 Sermon Illustration Ideas
Resources Mentioned
The Pastors Circle
Sermonary
Ministry Pass
IllustrationIdeas.Bible
Influence Magazine Article
Full Transcript
Wade Bearden:
Welcome to this episode of Hello Church. We’re so excited that you’re listening/watching today. My name is Wade Bearden.
Justin Trapp:
And I’m Justin Trapp.
And pastors, we have a question. Be honest with yourself.
Wade Bearden:
That’s a great way to start a question.
Justin Trapp:
Right.
Wade Bearden:
That makes me a little nervous.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
How memorable do you think your sermons are, on a scale of 1 to 10?
Wade Bearden:
1 to 10.
Justin Trapp:
Let’s just say, on average?
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
On average. You’ve probably had a few memorable sermons, for good or worse, right?
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
Is it “good or worst”? That’s not even the right phrase.
Wade Bearden:
“Better or worse.”
Justin Trapp:
For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer.
Wade Bearden:
For richer or for poorer.
And here’s what I would say, too, as you think about 1 to 10, take whatever number you land on. You might be like, “Ah, I’m a 9,” or “I’m a 7,” or “I’m a 6,” and drop it probably two points lower. And that’s probably the best way to go about it. Because we tend to overvalue-
Justin Trapp:
Yes.
Wade Bearden:
… the memorability, I guess. I don’t even know if that’s a word.
Justin Trapp:
Or audience size.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
It’s like, “Oh, 100 people were here.” And it’s like, “No. There was 50, and two kids.”
Think through that. And that’s a great way to introduce the topic that we’re going to be discussing today. We’ve been walking through the act of writing a sermon, this season of Hello Church. And we’re going to be talking about sermon illustrations.
Sermon illustrations are powerful. They’re important. And Justin, I believe it was Charles Spurgeon that said, sermon illustrations, they’re like windows. They let the light in, they illuminate your sermons, they illuminate your talks. And so, we’re going to be talking about the importance of sermon illustrations, different types of sermon illustrations, and where you could find sermon illustrations.
Justin Trapp:
A question I have is, where do you find some of your best sermon illustrations, and how do you keep them organized? I know for a lot of pastors, if you’re watching on YouTube, let us know. Where do you find your sermon illustrations? Comment below. How do you keep them organized? Maybe that’s two different places, or an app here, and you go to a site here, or you go to a few places.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Or do you say, “You know what? All of my illustrations from each Sunday are from that week. If something funny happens to me, I use it that week, or I just don’t use it at all.” We’d love to hear about your illustration database, where you get those, how you keep those.
Justin Trapp:
One of the biggest questions, this whole episode, I think, is why are sermon illustrations important for the sermon?
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Trapp:
And I think you alluded to that with the Spurgeon quote. But let’s just talk through that. Why are they important?
I think one of the first things that you can start with is, they help retain attention.
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Trapp:
Our world is full of noise, full of chaos, and people’s attention spans are not that long. In fact, we have short attention spans. We don’t think you have the attention span of a goldfish. That’s been the goldfish myth. But TED Talks are on average of 18 minutes long. A Protestant evangelical congregation, the average sermon is 25 to 39 minutes. But a lot of studies have shown that 20 minutes is really the optimum attention span for adults.
Wade Bearden:
It’s fine to preach longer than 20 minutes, but if you do that, you’ve got to find ways to continually grab their attention, over and over again. And usually, when we think of the sermon introduction, we talked about this recently, is the sermon introduction captures their attention. I think it’s a good idea to remind yourself to capture people’s attention throughout the sermon.
And you can do that in a lot of different ways. You can do that by explaining an interesting fact about the text, but you can also do that through sermon illustrations. So, think about attention and say, “Hey, I don’t want to just capture it at the start, but every 5, 10 minutes, I’m continually capturing it again, in case people are starting to wander off.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah. It gives people a mental break, so to speak, where it’s shifting gears, or it’s a zig, when you’ve been zagging from a content standpoint. You’ve been preaching and teaching, and working through this content. And then, “Let me illustrate.” And that gives people a mental break.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
And I think, too, whenever you think through mental breaks, if during your sermon you’re really getting in deep with the passage, it’s requiring a lot of energy. People’s brains are burning a lot more calories, because they’re thinking about that. When you introduce a sermon illustration, it allows people to take a break for a moment. And that’s super important.
At the same time, it connects the ancient world to current times. I like to think of, and this is an image that’s been used before, but you think of biblical times, a piece of land, and you think of modern times. And what you want to do is explain the text by what was going on when it was written, and who it was being written to, who wrote it. And then, you want to build a bridge to where we are today. And sermon illustrations can help you do that. And like I mentioned before, with that window metaphor, it can shine a light on a topic or a piece of text, and help people to really understand what that means for them today.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Another reason why sermon illustrations are important is because it makes your sermon sticky. It makes them memorable. I was thinking back before this episode, what are some of the most memorable sermons, not that I’ve preached, but that I remember?
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Trapp:
And there’s a few of them from my adult life, but there are a few that I actually thought about from when I was in kid’s church as an adolescent. The illustration with the two pitchers of water. And here’s our heart and here’s our life. And then, when we sin, it pollutes our heart. It pollutes that clear water, and the water turned muddy. And then, the other pitcher was, Jesus comes in and washes away our sins. And you pour the water in and the water becomes clean again. I remember that message still from Tammy Caldron at North Central Church when I was a kid.
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Trapp:
And it just goes to show that a good illustration, a good story, or a good metaphor, or something that just perks their curiosity, it can really last generations, to be honest with you.
Wade Bearden:
Oh, yeah.
And another point, too, is it can engage the audience, whether physically or within their imaginations. And I have another story. I remember in Children’s Church, we were talking about how Jesus said, “You’re talking about the speck in someone’s eye, and you’ve got a plank in your eye.” And I remember, the pastor had an adult volunteer come up and hold this two by four, and just walk around. And it was really funny. And it helped to open up that passage to me.
And I was like, “Okay. Jesus is actually, he’s using humor here. He’s like, ‘Hey, you’re pointing out a little bit of dirt in someone’s eye, but look at your eye.'” And just the image of someone walking around with a plank sticking out of their eye, that’s something that I’ve actually never forgotten. And it did what a good illustration does. It helped to pique my interest. We were all paying attention to what was happening on stage. But it helped me to understand what Jesus was talking about.
Justin Trapp:
There was a sermon that was preached at a church I was on staff at in San Antonio, at one of my first ministry jobs, and it was the high school pastor.
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Trapp:
I still remember his message, because he came in, he was talking about the most powerful weapon in the world. And he did this big buildup about, “We’ve got the most powerful weapon in the world here.” We actually have it in our custody.
Wade Bearden:
Oh, no. I think I know what this is. I know where this is going.
Justin Trapp:
He hired some guys that were police officers at the church, so they brought it in on this cart with a tarp over it. And it had a police escort. And then, he unveiled it, and it was this giant cow tongue.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve seen that before, too. It became a famous deal for a little while. But it was cool, because we all thought it was amazing when we saw it the first time. A giant cow tonuge.
Justin Trapp:
But everyone in the room remembered that point.
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Trapp:
Wade, let me ask you this. What makes a sermon illustration great?
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Obviously, a sermon illustration needs to illustrate what you’re talking about, to help it stick. If it doesn’t do that, if it’s just kind of a funny story, it’ll be entertaining, but it’s not a good sermon illustration. You’ve got to think through how to place those in your message.
For example, I was preaching on the Tale of the Two Builders, the Parable of the Two Builders. One built their house on the rock, and one on the sand. And as I was studying this, it made me realize there were two different ways that these individuals prepared in the parable. One did the really hard work of digging out that bedrock before they built their house. And the other one just started. They just started building.
And on the outside, the one who built their house on the sand, they actually seem like they were ahead. You walk by, and you’re like, “Okay, their house is already going up, and this person’s still digging around in the sand.” But that work and that preparation prepared them for the storms of life. And so, I was thinking of this illustration, and I thought of an illustration of when I ran my first marathon. I thought I trained okay. But I didn’t really know what I was doing. And I was training in the cool weather, and then I ran it at Disney World when it was like 85 degrees. And so, my body wasn’t prepared for it.
The big idea with that illustration, which was kind of a fun illustration, is that, what we do today prepares us for tomorrow. And we can either prepare well or not prepare well. And the idea of not being ready for a marathon is something that people can relate to, whether they’ve run it or not, but just the idea of not being ready, and having to run all those miles.
I think what a good illustration does is, yeah, it could be funny, but it’s placed in your message where you’re breaking it up. You’ve done the big deep exegesis. Now, you want to do something to capture their attention again. But then it points them to what it means today. And it helps them to understand how they can apply it in their own lives. I think that’s really important.
Also, just the delivery of it. I usually like to jump on in, instead of saying, “Hey, I’m going to pause for a moment and tell a story.” I like to finish my point, and then say, “A couple years ago, I was…” So, I think the delivery is really important. And if you’re not a good storyteller, I would practice that.
And then also, sometimes you can use visual aids. Sometimes you can use your words to create images.
But sometimes if you’re talking about a painting, if you’re talking using a prop-
Justin Trapp:
Or a tongue.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Those visual aids can be helpful.
I think it really is all about, like we said, capturing their attention, helping them to understand the text, and then understanding what it means today, so when they hear the illustration, they say, “Oh. I get it. That’s what Jesus is teaching. Okay, I understand it, now. That makes a lot of sense.” You want it to be a light bulb moment.
And that’s why sometimes when we’ve talked about sermon illustrations or even in our branding when we have illustrations, we’ll use a light bulb as a visual metaphor. Because, boom, the light bulb should turn on when we use a sermon illustration.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Let’s talk about, for a few moments, the types of illustrations that pastors can use in their sermon. And Influence Magazine created a list, so we’re going to use some of their content here, 10 types of illustrations.
And let me just pause. Fun fact about Influence Magazine. Influence Magazine is published by the Assemblies of God. And when they were getting ready to create the magazine, I had a guy call me from Springfield who works at the corporate or national office, so to speak.
Wade Bearden:
Uh-huh.
Justin Trapp:
And I was an Assemblies of God minister at the time. And he said, “Hey, Justin, we’re familiar with your work at Ministry Pass. We’d like to interview you to be the editor of this magazine that we’re going to create-
Wade Bearden:
Oh, wow. Makes sense.
Justin Trapp:
… called Influence Magazine.” And I’m like, “Okay. Well, that’s cool. That’s flattering.”
I get into this interview in this meeting, and I’m going, “Why on earth am I here?” I literally have zero editorial experience, none. And I’m talking with these two guys that were consultants, where they consulted with a relevant magazine, and now they’re consulting with the Assemblies to start this Influence.
Obviously, I didn’t get the job, but I also wasn’t sure that I really wanted the job. It made me feel like they needed to fill a quota. They had to interview at least three Assemblies of God ministers for the position.
Wade Bearden:
And then, they would be good, and hire the person they want.
Well, I feel like you could have written this. Because this is stuff that we talk about.
Before we jump into it, there’s different types of illustrations. I was thinking through how many a person should have.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
How many you should have. I think you need something in the introduction.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
And you probably need at least two in the body. If you have three points, I like to have one per each point. So, that would be 1, 2, 3, 4, maybe one in the conclusion.
Each message, I really think you probably need a minimum of three, possibly four. And you might be like, “Whoa, that’s a lot.” But as you’ll see here, from what we’re going to tell you, it doesn’t necessarily mean each one has to be 10 minutes long.
Justin Trapp:
And not every one has to be a story.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. It doesn’t have to be a story.
Keep that in mind. If you’re like, “Man, four, five, that just seems like a lot,” keep in mind that these could be 30 seconds. Just a way to illustrate your point. We’ll hop through.
The first one, and we’ve mentioned this. I gave you an illustration of an illustration. Stories from your life. That’s probably the one that people use the most.
Justin Trapp:
Sure.
Wade Bearden:
Stories from their family and their childhood. If you go to a church, you could pretty much guarantee you’re going to hear a story about someone’s childhood-
Justin Trapp:
Or their kids.
Wade Bearden:
… or their kids. That’s it. Think through bigger stuff. Of course, get permission from your family members before you share stories about them. But yeah, use stories from your life. If something happens, write it down. If something funny happens, write it down.
The next one would be historical examples. I love to read history.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
And I think historical examples are just powerful. I was reading this book about the aftermath of World War II in Germany, as the German people were recovering from war, and also just dealing with their guilt, or not dealing with the guilt, of World War II, and what their nation did. And there was a lot of rubble because of the allied airstrikes. All these cities were trying to figure out, what do we do with all this rubble?
And Frankfurt actually just waited. And then they didn’t clear it for a while. And instead, what they did was, they started having these scientists, these chemists, experiment on the rubble. And they found a way to break it down multiple times, this rubble, to create a substance that would be used in concrete. Then, they created a factory. And instead of losing money to get the rubble taken care of, they actually harnessed that. And by 1952, they were in the black, they made money off of that.
I read that and I was like, “Man, that says something about junk being used for profit, for the benefit, patience. And I was like, “Okay. I still don’t know where I’m going to use that illustration,” but what I did is, I just wrote it down. Things like that you could take and say, “Okay. Somewhere in the future, I could use that illustration.” So, historical examples are important.
Justin Trapp:
Another one is personal testimonies. And this goes without saying, because I know we mentioned personal stories from your life as well. You have quotes from famous people. How many times has a pastor quoted John Maxwell when talking about leadership.
Wade Bearden:
Right? Right?
Justin Trapp:
Every time.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah, I’ve used one. There’s one when I think Tom Brady had won a couple of Super Bowls and he was just like, there’s this interview where he says, “I still feel like I’m missing something in life.” And I’ve used that before.
Justin Trapp:
Mm-hmm.
Wade Bearden:
So, you can use quotes from famous Christian authors. Or you can use quotes from people who are not Christians, that express this sort of yearning for something more in life. I think that could be really important.
Justin Trapp:
Another one is biblical analogies, which the Bible is rich with flavor and stories and analogies and parables. So, there’s a lot to choose from there.
You could also do statistics. We have census studies and experiments and peer reviewed papers.
Wade Bearden:
I love reading more popular level psychology books.
Justin Trapp:
Mm-hmm.
Wade Bearden:
And they have so many cool illustrations, just really, really good stuff. And I feel like, in the last two years, I’ve probably talked about multiple experiments. And a lot of us have used the one where people are supposed to watch this video and count these people. And they’re so busy counting the people, they don’t realize there’s someone dressed up as a gorilla in the background. That’s like in a famous experiment. But I think experiments are really good.
Justin Trapp:
You could do articles.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
This whole list is an illustration, right?
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Trapp:
Articles.
You could do devotional commentaries.
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Trapp:
A lot of devotional commentaries have some great content for you to look into,` and to use in your messages.
Jokes.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
I mean…
Wade Bearden:
Joke books, I guess.
Justin Trapp:
Got to have a good joke.
Wade Bearden:
Here’s what I say.
Justin Trapp:
Got to start with something funny.
Wade Bearden:
Don’t steal people’s jokes. I’ve seen people do this before. They’ll listen to Brian Regan or Jim Gaffigan, and they’ll take a bit from their stand up and they’ll do it. Here’s a couple things wrong. Well, first of all, if you just take someone else’s work, that’s plagiarism. But two, if someone hears that and they’ve already heard it, they’re just like, “Oh, they’re copying them.” And then three, it’s never going to be as funny if you do it. It probably won’t be funny if you do it. So, maybe play a clip, or come up with your own jokes.
Poems are good. I will read poetry every once in a while. And sometimes something just kind of hits me. I think that’s a good way to find illustrations.
Justin Trapp:
My first ministry job, the pastor at that church used poems a lot. And they were very effective.
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Those are just some different types of illustrations to think through. Because like I said, a lot of times we just think of personal stories.
Justin Trapp:
Mm-hmm.
Wade Bearden:
And if we do that, we start to really scratch the bottom of the barrel, because we’re just trying really hard to find a personal story, and we just don’t have those. This next question is probably the most important question of all.
Justin Trapp:
Yep.
Wade Bearden:
How do we find sermon illustrations?
I have a system. But how do we find those?
Justin Trapp:
I think we’ve all wasted hours looking for a great illustration. And you go to a site, and it looks like the other dozen sites that you’ve just been to, where they look old, and haven’t been updated since 1994.
One of the reasons why we created illustrationideas.bible, it’s a website you can go to, we post a new free sermon illustration every day. You can search based on keyword or Book of the Bible. And we just wanted to have a site that has new and fresh and curated sermon illustrations for pastors. So, if you’ve never been go to illustrationideas.bible, and we post a new illustration every day. And it’s free.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
We have them in our ministry pass guides. We’ve got great ones every week. We probably have two to three good illustrations.
We also have built out this illustration widget in Sermonary 2.0. If you are a premium member, you can add an illustration block. And of course you can add your own illustrations. Or you can search our database, right there in your sermon dashboard. You could search “grace,” find a sermon illustration, click it, you like it, add it to your sermon. It’s super simple.
Let me tell you how I find illustrations, too. One thing I tell pastors, if pastors ask me, “How do you find those things?” I think you just need to read widely. A lot of times we think, “Oh. We’re pastors.” We should only read theology books. But read history books, read fun articles, read fun fiction.
Justin Trapp:
Read secular books.
Wade Bearden:
Yes.
And every time you come across something interesting, write it down. If you’re using Sermonary, you can create an idea note, and you can put it in there.
In the past, I’ve used a Google Sheets document. And I put in the illustration, the source. If I have a picture from a book, I’ll take a picture with my phone. I’ll link that there. And then, I’ll put topics.
So, if I need to, if I’m like, “Man, I’m talking about Grace. I can just search that document and find it. So, do that. But the thing is, be reading, constantly be on the lookout. Because if not, they’ll mostly just be maybe movie clips or stories from your life. But really dig deep and use those. Create some sort of database. And use keywords. I think it’s super important to use keywords. Because if you do that, then it’s going to be searchable.
Justin Trapp:
Well, another thing you do is, and you may have already said this and I was in my own thoughts, but you could ask other pastors like, “Hey, I’m preaching through a series-
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
… and I need an illustration on generosity. Do you have any that you’ve used recently?”
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
We had a pastor ask this in our Facebook group.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
He asked, so let me pull this up. This was one of the individuals in the Pastor Circle.
Justin Trapp:
It’s a Facebook group. It’s 3000 other pastors. It’s a really great group. If you haven’t joined, make sure you join, and connect with other guys and gals in ministry, serving and leading.
Wade Bearden:
Jeremiah. Maybe you’re listening, Jeremiah. He asked for an illustration for the Parable of the Sower, which is really good. A sample could be Van Gogh’s, The Sower. There’s a couple different versions out there. The one that I like the most is the one where the sower is coming towards the front of the painting. And if you sit there and just look at it, just really look at it, it feels like the presence of the sower is approaching you. That’s why the painting is famous. Because it invokes that emotion of, there’s this pressing need. The Savior is inviting us, he’s coming towards us.
And then, you’ll notice too in the background, the sun looks like it’s setting, that there’s this sense of immediacy to the whole issue. You could pull up a painting like that, and you could say, “Crisis. He sends that invitation to you.” And there’s this moment, there’s this immediacy.
In the past, too, Justine, I’ve talked about wide receivers. And in the draft, with a wide receiver, they’ll talk about, “Oh, has good hands, has good speed,” or, “Hey, is prone to drop the ball.” So, I’ve created a different wide receiver set for each of, oh, in the Parable of the Sower, each of the grounds, so the one that receives it, while the one that’s distracted, the talent, we all know about the talented player who’s really good but gets distracted off the field. And so you could say, “Hey, we’ve all seen that wide receiver. That’s this soil. Oh, we’ve seen this wide receiver, that’s this soil.”
I try not to use names whenever I did that, because I didn’t want to trash any wide receivers. But I think Andre Johnson was always the good soil. He was just the guy. He played for the Houston Texans. He should be in the Hall of Fame.
Justin Trapp:
Unless your name’s Cortland Finnegan.
Wade Bearden:
Those are just some examples.
Justin Trapp:
Yep.
Wade Bearden:
I think that’s really important to utilize.
And like I said, create that database so you’re not just using stories or things you found this week. Because if you’re only using stuff you found this week that’s in your recent memory, you’re going to have to stretch it. And it’s not really going to go with the text. It’s just going to be there because you find it interesting or funny.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
That’s some of our thoughts on incorporating sermon illustrations into your sermon. Yes, we believe that they’re important. Helps you be a more effective communicator, helps make your sermons a little bit more sticky and memorable. And so, you should incorporate sermon illustrations into your content every single week. Don’t let a sermon go by without using illustrations to help illuminate, like you referenced earlier, with Spurgeon, letting the light come through that window for the minds and the hearts of the people.
If you’re listening on Spotify or Apple, please, love for you to leave us a review. That really helps get the word out. And it really helps the podcast. This is free. We do this for free. And so, if you want to support us continuing to make the podcast, just leave us a review, and that would be wonderful.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. It would be great. That helps get the show out, helps people to find Hello Church.
Next week, I’m excited we’re going to be talking about artwork. This is a little bit less about writing a message, and the things that we do to reinforce our sermon series.
Justin Trapp:
Still an important part of the message.
Wade Bearden:
It’s super important. So, make sure you tune into that. I think it’s going to be very, very important, and helpful to you.
Until next time…
Justin Trapp:
Yep. See you.
Wade Bearden:
See you later, on Hello Church.
7 Sermon Outline Templates
Besides helping you speak your messages more clearly, outlines can also save you a TON of time when it comes to researching Bible passages and collecting illustrations.