Proclaimer Blog
Light through the windows
Aged about six, at one of his first class assemblies, my son was standing in a line of kids who each had to tell the watching parents what they wanted to be when the grow up. There was the predictable list: fireman, astronaut, footballer, ballet dancer, nurse. My son said: “I want to be a nillustrator” (he likes comics and drawing, you see – and also, it seems, likes being different from the other kids.)
Well, when it comes to preaching, I want to be a better ‘nillustrator’. The seminar on this at NWA was the better attended of the two, and my sense was that this partly reflects a feeling among many preachers that they are weak in this area. If they expected to hear from an expert they would have been disappointed; it was just me reflecting on my weaknesses in this area. However sometimes we can learn more from someone who’s had to work hard to grow at something so that it becomes learned behaviour, rather than it coming naturally, because they can articulate the issues better than someone who just does it instinctively.
Here are two principles with sermon illustrations. Obvious stuff, I know, but I need to keep reminding myself of it:
- Illustrate more often for impact than for understanding. Most of the Bible is not difficult to comprehend. But what our cold hearts and dull minds need is illustrations which express the impact of our passage in different ways, so that the truth comes at us from all angles. After all, Scripture does that all the time, teaching the same truths in theological form, and also in narrative, poetry, apocalyptic, and parable. By contrast, the SEIA model (state, explain, illustrate, apply) – helpful though it is – tends to set me up more to illustrate for understanding. Increasingly, though, I think I need far more good illustrations for impact.
- One specific story is better than a thousand generalities. “Yesterday a friend of mine spilled a full cup of coffee down his trousers five minutes before an important meeting” is better than “There are many times, aren’t there, when annoying things happen”. It’s a narrative that evokes an emotion, rather than a colourless generality. You may not need to keep reminding yourself of this, but I do.