Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 One of the most important tools in a great message in a church is having great sermon illustrations, but not all sermon illustrations are created equal. In fact, today we're gonna talk about five sermon illustration mistakes that you need to avoid. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the reach, right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello, and with me as always as my co-host Ian Hyat, we're here to help your church see more visitors and grow. Hey guys, welcome to the reach right podcast episode number 97. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my co-host
Speaker 4 00:01:06 Ian Hyat. What's up Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:08 Hey, now I'm much Ian man. Excited to talk a little bit today and, uh, we're gonna be talking about sermon illustration ideas, and specifically we talking about mistakes that pastors and people that are preaching in churches that you need to avoid with sermon illustrations. Uh, yeah. So I think it should be a important conversation to have. Um, so yeah, you think so?
Speaker 4 00:01:29 I, yeah, of course it is. Yeah. Important to, especially our audience, which is mostly pastors <laugh> so yeah,
Speaker 0 00:01:36 For sure. Yeah. Mostly, uh, church leaders. I, I know that I have made probably most of these mistakes. I don't know if I've, uh, I can't think of an example of one or two of them, but we'll get into them a little bit and talk about some of those mistakes. But before we do, I think it's just important. Um, obviously anybody that's been in ministry for any kind of length of time, they know that illustrations are one of the keys to successful communication. Like it's just something that we need to be able to do. Uh, Jesus did it, uh, Jesus spoke in parables, which were really illustrations. He was taking a story and using it to make a bigger point and right. I would be cautious about calling my things that I say in a sermon calling them parables. Right. I, I tell stories in sermons, not necessarily parables, I wouldn't say, but, uh, you know, I think we should be using illustrations to try and get these kinds of points, these kinds of stories across.
Speaker 4 00:02:30 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I've used them too. Whenever I've preached. I haven't preached as much as you, but I, as you know, we've mentioned in the podcast before you and I pastored together and, uh, and uh, planted a church together in the Austin, Texas area and, uh, yeah, definitely. Um, I, I right away and, and actually you kind of helped me cuz you had, had far more experience, much more experience than I did. So, and one of the things that you hit home on right away, whenever I was, uh, preparing to, to preach and craft my message, uh, was to use illustrations. So yeah, it's definitely
Speaker 0 00:03:04 A good thing. Yeah. We had like that formula that we used right. Where it was like, you have a point, you have a story, you have a, um, a call to action for it basically. So it was everything. I mean story illustrations
Speaker 4 00:03:14 Story for every point almost. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:03:16 Yeah. Yeah. So for sure, heavy on the stories, but we do need to give some ideas, I guess, on things that, uh, would make for a bad story or a bad illustration or mistakes that people make. So why don't you go ahead and kick us off with the first one? What is the first mistake
Speaker 4 00:03:29 To avoid? I will, uh, first one is copying someone else's illustration or story, or, uh, also known as borrowing, um, someone else's story. So now, I mean, obviously you want to be original, you know, just like you get in, uh, trouble for plagiarizing or, um, you know, copying, uh, you know, a report in school or whatever. So I think your daughter got in trouble for that or something. So I'm just kidding. But uh, no, so, but, uh, but no, you don't wanna do that. And it, and people sense and I think even more in our day and age where we see effective marketing, right? We talk a lot about church marketing is authentic, right? Same thing with your sermon, illustration people, they sniff out. If you are copying someone, if it's not your own story, it's kind of hard to tell it authentically right now that doesn't mean that you can't, you know, borrow a bit and make that known. I think it, you know, if, if, if we clear, we know that people have great stories out there, other pastors have great testimonies, uh, things that they've experienced and there's nothing wrong with, with borrowing that, but, but just making sure you kind of make that clear, you know, and, uh, to, to your audience for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:04:40 Yeah. I think that, that, that's, there's another word for this. I think it's called plagiarism, uh, which is kind of like a more formal, like legal sounding term and you gotta be really careful with this. Like if you're yeah. Um, I, I think that I, I've not heard of a situation where there's been a legal consequence for a pastor copying some other illustration or some other story they heard from another pastor, but it's just wrong. It's wrong to do it. If you don't cite the source. Now that's the key caveat is that I think that there's not a single person out there, out there that would say, you know, you shouldn't use someone else's stories, uh, if you, if you don't, if you cite them, if you're willing to cite them. Yeah. It's totally fine. In fact, I think it's fantastic. So, Hey, that reminds me a lot of pastor ed who said this, or yeah.
Speaker 0 00:05:22 Uh, I was reading, uh, from a book by John Maxwell and he said this, or, you know, just kind of getting it out there. I was watching another sermon from, uh, Steven ick and he said this right. That's that's welcomed. And I think it just kind of, it makes you feel more authentic. I found this to be the case too, for this is something that we kind of wrestle with when it comes to social posts. Uh, so I know we talk a lot and we have lots of episodes out there about social media strategies and those things. And I was just talking to someone who runs one of the largest Christian meme accounts. Right. And he was telling me that like half of his content, he's just taking it from other me accounts and, and citing them. Right. Making sure that he does a link to them and he cites them properly. And everybody wins that they're thrilled that you're sharing their content. People are, they're seeing that you're linking back to them. So yeah. As long as we're citing our sources, I think there's nobody that really objects to that. There's no new idea under the sun, so right. Yeah. You're gonna borrow, you're gonna share, you're gonna get your ideas from somewhere. Yeah. Just make sure you tell people where you get 'em from.
Speaker 4 00:06:24 That's exactly it that's good stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:06:25 Yeah. Here's one that I'm, uh, guilty of. So the first one was copying or borrowing second, uh, illustration mistake to avoid is repeating the same sermon illustration <laugh> yeah. Um, we have this, uh, I don't, I just stories in general, like we tend to get these certain stories ingrained in our, right in our hearts. Like if we ever, if you ever came to one of our family gatherings, you have come to them all because at every single family gathering, we tend to tell the same stories. Oh, do you remember that time? That, that Craig did this? And it was so funny and it was, we tell, oh yeah, well we've told that story 11 times. And so some of the younger people in our big family gatherings, they start to say, they'll kind of start to predict the stories that are gonna be told that particular time when we get together.
Speaker 0 00:07:08 So same thing comes from your sermon illustrations that if, if you pastor for any length of time, I, I, the longest I've ever been at one church was seven years. I pastored in one place. But like, people get familiar with your stories and you may, right? Like, it's true that you have to preach the same topics. Like you can't just preach about, um, about forgiveness one time in seven years. Right. And expect that everybody's gonna know about it and say, I already talked about that. Why aren't you forgiving people? But when it comes to illustrations, they're just more memorable. Right. People are gonna remember these stories. And so if you use the same story over and over, it's gonna start to feel stale and not quite work the way we want it to.
Speaker 4 00:07:44 It's kinda like when my family roll their eyes, every time I tell someone, uh, my claim to fame is I played against drew Bre in high school. Uh that's right. I remember
Speaker 0 00:07:52 Football. He touched his shoelaces that one time. Right?
Speaker 4 00:07:54 Yeah. And so that, that touched his shoe. I did a little more than that, but yes, he beat us. He smeared us. Okay. That's fine. <laugh> so, uh, it was expected and, and, and since he went pro it doesn't feel so bad. So anyway, but no, my pastor does this too. It's funny. You know, he's got a great, and, and again, your testimony, like your personal testimony is, is something that you should share. Right. That's biblical for us to share that over and over again. But, and my, my pastor, he has a great story. And, but he, but, you know, he tells it often, uh it's so members will obviously be like, okay, here we go again. Uh, but you know, he, he played, um, football for
Speaker 0 00:08:30 LSU. I'd been for LSU. I know it. He even, I know it,
Speaker 4 00:08:34 Big guy. Yeah. Played for LSU big LSU fan. His father though, was an NFL, uh, coach. So he traveled around, but he tells this story very, very often into, and I can almost just, you know, repeat it word for word, but you know, sometimes it is good to re you don't wanna do this all the time, but if you know that you have a lot of newer visitors, it's good for them to kind of hear maybe some illustrate, but you just gotta be careful with it that you're not redundant.
Speaker 0 00:08:59 Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just pass this episode along to pastor Joe and, uh, that's right. He can see it. That's kinda give him some of your feedback that way, see how it goes for you.
Speaker 4 00:09:07 That's good stuff. That's it? Good stuff. Well, I'll get the next one. That's, uh, pacing your story. Um, so I kinda like this because I think that, you know, pacing is very important, um, to, to make sure you're not going too fast, that you're not going too slow so that people, um, you know, don't miss the details. If you're going, if you're going too fast, they'll miss the, the details. But if you're dragging it out, you know, then, then it gets a little bit of boring. So there's a happy medium. I think, you know, you know, this, you practice, I know you're a big practicer of your sermons ahead of time. Uh, you spend a lot of time doing that. Um, whenever I've preached, I'd done the same and, uh, I wanna, I wanna memorize it and not have to look at notes as much as possible and all of that too. But, uh, but I think, you know, the pace is very important, right? And, and that's, it's important for a pastor to stay on, uh, on, on track with time too, to not get too long winded. Right. Same thing for illustration is for, for it to be delivered and, and receive the way you want. You wanna make sure you have a good, steady pace with it. So
Speaker 0 00:10:08 I think so, I I'm, I'm struggling to think of like, which way do most pastors struggle? Like I think that in general people, they, most sermons should be shorter if I were just to kind of say by and large, I think people err on the side of going too long because I have very rarely heard someone complain. I, I love our pastor. His just sermons are too short. You know, I really wish they were, he would go longer, but I've heard the opposite many times. So. Yeah. Um, and I, at the same time though, I think I know my struggle when I'm communicating is, uh, is communicating at the right pace and not talking too quickly and kind of glossing over things and going fast. So sometimes we just have too much content. Yeah. But yeah, I think that, um, you, maybe you're one way, maybe you're too fast, maybe you're too slow, but I think you hit it right. Is that practicing is the way around that I, we encourage every, every communicator to, to practice time yourself. Uh, I did that before every single Sunday morning. Yeah. I would be practicing. I would time myself I'd know how long each element was. Yeah. And it's just a, a good tool and you get better over time. You get better at hitting your time markers.
Speaker 4 00:11:12 Well, and I think with an illustration too, because it is a, a story for the most part, it should come off natural. So you should almost be just conversational and tone and not rushed anyway. Right. I mean, it, it's not to say you can't make that mistake, but I think that's one good way to think about it too. So, but, uh, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:11:28 I agree. That's good. So, all right. Next one is, uh, <laugh>. This is, I wish it was obvious, but it's scolding with passive aggressive sermon illustrations. That's great. Um, I, I, I don't recall a time where I have done this directly, like, but I, I think what some pastors fall into the mistake of is with their sermon illustrations, they know that their church is dealing with some kind of an issue. Uh, maybe there is a forgiveness issue or there's some kind of is famous for like a gossip issue. Right? Yeah. So like, if you're, if you're using an illustration to like try and talk about things and if you have like, sometimes we think that no, no, one's really gonna know what I'm talking about when I say this person and I'll leave their name out. Like I'll do like yeah. You know, um, uh, I'll, I'll use a different name for the person and, and make it like a, a story where I'm not actually citing or using the person's name, but yeah.
Speaker 0 00:12:21 You know what, like, just understand that usually people are gonna figure out who you're talking about. Uh, so you want to be, I mean, I would just put it off limits. Like if I'm currently dealing with a situation in my church or there's some kind of a problem that's brewing, don't even get close to touching that and bringing it out in a sermon illustration. Yeah. You know, you can teach on the topic. I mean, if, if someone is, you could teach on gossip when your church struggles with gossip, cuz every church does. Yeah. Or you could teach on forgiveness when people are struggling with forgiveness, but don't use it as an illustration. Um, really ever, probably it's. I can't think of a good reason to do that.
Speaker 4 00:12:58 You, you, you're making I'm chuckling because, uh, you're reminding me of a video that you sent, uh, my way a little while back, we won't name the pastor, but this guy called out,
Speaker 0 00:13:07 We're gonna it right now. We're gonna do an illustration. <laugh> talking about someone that message. But go ahead.
Speaker 4 00:13:12 I'm sorry. So he's calling out a, a witch, uh, in, in his, uh, a couple of witches in his church and uh, and, and basically kind of called them out. Well, he didn't say their name, but, uh, it, it was pretty funny. Everybody
Speaker 0 00:13:24 Knew who they were talking about. It was pretty obvious if you went to that church
Speaker 4 00:13:28 Doing witchcraft, they were pro and this was not a huge church. So they were right there in front of him, you know, something like that. So it was pretty funny. Uh, I've also been a part of a, a me a message one time to a, it was a small, uh, gathering of, of pastors. And, um, the guy speaking basically, uh, stopped midway through his message and said, oh my gosh, God's telling me that, that one of you is having an affair. And, uh, and, and, and you better said, so, you know, and again, uh, we're not gonna dive into you. You do what the holy spirit leads you to do and all of that, but it just reminded me of those funny, uh, examples. But, but it does, it definitely took the, it made it strange and took, it definitely took the focus off the message.
Speaker 4 00:14:11 So, uh, but, uh, there you go, but <laugh> good. I'll go. The next one that's, uh, using don't use a bland or unrelatable, uh, illustration. Let's just, you know, face it, there's, there's kind of boring stories out there in illustrations. Right. So, um, you gotta think about that, you know, think about your audience, right? Know, know your audience. I think every pastor should know that, um, is this story gonna be entertaining funny? And, and, you know, people are sitting through a whole message, right? So I always love it when humor is thrown into a story, you know, or something that's like, wow. You know, and jaw dropping, cuz it, I, it helps people focus back in on the message too. And so if you're bland or if it's something that's not relevant to your audience, you know, maybe it's a story that you think is good, but it's not something that would be relevant to most people in your church. Uh, then that's something you don't want to do as well.
Speaker 0 00:15:07 I preacher, um, I was, I don't know. I started preaching in, uh, our church, uh, when I was 23, 24 years old. Uh, I had this thing that I thought I was gonna do for my whole life, where in every single sermon I made it, my goal to use a baseball illustration, cuz I'm a big baseball fan and I, yeah. But like a lot of people don't like baseball <laugh> yeah. It's come to my attention. A lot of people know nothing about baseball. I think it's a, it's a distinctly, um, I mean you're almost certainly American or Latin American, if you follow baseball or Uhhuh Japanese, I suppose. But like on top of that, like most of the United States can tell you much about who's winning in baseball or yeah. They don't know a lot about it. So I was doing that and it came to my attention. I had to kind of, once I started, I was doing it like 10 or 15 messages in a row, I would use always one baseball illustration. Yeah. But I just realized that it wasn't getting the results that I wanted. And so I quickly abandoned that idea. Yeah. And
Speaker 4 00:15:59 Moved on. You can always, you can always stop and explain what an RBI is and, and uh, you could definitely, you could.
Speaker 0 00:16:05 Yeah. But, uh, it might be, uh, it might fit into the, uh, unrelatable or bland stuff that uh, that's you were just talking about. True. So, but with that, let me give you kind of our winning formula, uh, for making sermon illustrations kind of some things that we've, you, you kind of passed them through these gates or these checklists. Yeah. Uh, and I think you can have a, a sermon illustration that will really work. So always start with a hook that's thing, number one. So this can be a question, a stat, uh, something to that effect, but you, you want to start with something to grab someone's attention. Yeah. And then here's the mistake. A lot of people make is that the next part is to give some kind of background or context. And the mistake that people make a lot of times is they make the illustration all about the background and the context.
Speaker 0 00:16:49 And that's what I would've done with the baseball illustration. I was, I'd have to spread now for those of you who don't know an RBI is a run bat at, in which means the hitters at the plate, they hit somebody and sometimes you can actually get a walk and it'd still be an RBI and you'd get into all those things. Right. Yeah. So it's totally, it takes too much time and you lose people's attention. Right. And you do those things there. So you, you briefly give the background and the context so that the illustration's gonna make sense for everybody. Yeah. And then here's where you pause a little bit, as you tell the story, and this is where this is, step three is you kind of get into some of the details, use adjectives and language that helps people get there and be in those shoes, talk about the way that you were feeling.
Speaker 0 00:17:29 Yeah. And how it made other people feel you get into that's where you spend the bulk of your time. Fourth, you draw some kind of a connection for people. So you say, and just like in that story, that's how God feels about you. Or just like we experienced, this is what you'll experience also. So you kind of, you kind of make the connection for people and then you end it with some kind of a bang. You end it with some kind of a, a take home. Or, um, uh, if I do this, then I'll get these kinds of results. And then you give people that hope that they need to really make it work. So that's kind of what we had come up with anything to add to that.
Speaker 4 00:18:06 No, no, I think that's a good segue into, um, the next thing, which is we want to give with that formula that you just gave. We want to give some illustration ideas. Maybe this is helpful for some pastors that are struggling to find some of these things, but so there's a lot of ideas that you can come up with. So biographies, uh, you know, stories about famous people, celebrities, you know, all that stuff gets people's attention. Uh, maybe politicians, even though I think, uh, we wanna try not to be as political as possible with,
Speaker 0 00:18:35 With caution, but,
Speaker 4 00:18:36 Uh, absolutely. Yeah. But business leaders, et cetera. Um, you know, maybe it's a, um, some breakthrough scientific or, um, technological discovery, you know, or something like that. Um, a fact about nature, um, biology, anatomy, you know, there's so many different things out there that, that you can think of, you know, um, and, you know, seen from a book or a movie that's a actually, uh, something that I really like is when someone borrows from like a, um, popular movie, like what was it yesterday was, uh, when we're recording this yesterday was may the fourth, which everyone jokes, uh, about that's, uh, made for those that don't are not nerds in our audience. That's when it's like national celebrate star wars day. So star
Speaker 0 00:19:21 Wars, awareness, day
Speaker 4 00:19:22 Star, star wars awareness day, but maybe, maybe come at, uh, use an illustration from star wars or something like that. Uh, you know, the, the, the Sunday of may the fourth,
Speaker 0 00:19:32 We'll say that with, with movies. Um, I like them as long as I've seen the movie. Right. So like,
Speaker 4 00:19:38 So it'd be a popular one, right?
Speaker 0 00:19:40 Yeah. I mean, it has to be, even then you have to realize that half of people still probably haven't seen it. So you may think that, you know, I, if someone were to do an Avengers analogy or something like that, or talk about, um, you know, one of those, like a Marvel movie that, you know, lots of people see them. I haven't seen, uh, most of them, I guess, and it would be kind of wasted. And so I, I don't know. I, I think that there's,
Speaker 4 00:20:02 Or if you bring up, you know, Rocky, uh, you know, Rocky is popular of a movie that is the next generation. You, a lot of them don't know. Totally. So you think about that too, if you're, if you're an aging pastor, some of those, you know, long time classics, you know? Yeah. They're, they're
Speaker 0 00:20:17 Six, you know? Yeah. Their, their class, I was just in a small group this week and we were talking about, uh, favorite movies and some of those things, and we were there's this guy who's about to turn 30. So he is not like a, a, he's not a kid he's about to turn 30, never seen the godfather movies. Um, so it's like, he, the illustrations that, you know, you would be, I, I mean, also be careful with the content in the movie. Cause sometimes when people hear a recommendation, they take it at our, an illustration, they'll take it as a recommendation. So, uh, be careful for it. Pastor,
Speaker 4 00:20:44 Pastor watched that movie.
Speaker 0 00:20:46 <laugh> exactly. Yeah. So be cautious with that one there, but any other ideas?
Speaker 4 00:20:51 No, I think that's good. Just, uh, you know, you can think of, again, athletes, you can use, uh, you know, those illustrations, um, you know, uh, common quote, cliches, lot of stuff,
Speaker 0 00:21:03 You know, again, uh, and I think that the, the best illustrations, in my opinion are heartfelt stories from your own life in a lot of ways. Yeah. That's great. Uh, so, you know, and, and, you know, some of us have more interesting lives than others. I fully acknowledge that, but I think if you, can, you just spend the time thinking about it, you have stories you've li you have lived experiences and they're impossible for people to discredit because yeah, they're what you experienced. And so I think they make it the best ones. I think, uh, as a, as a father, uh, I have three kids and they are constant fodder for sermon illustrations. Uh, I, I had to work out a deal with them at one point, basically. So I would use them so much so that they would like be, oh gosh, dad you'd use me again. I had to start paying them. Uh, so I give my kids five bucks an illustration. Now, whenever they're in an illustration in a sermon, they make $5 for it. So that kind of buried the hatchet there. And they're happy every time they hear their name mentioned in a message, but those stories from your personal life, I think are always gonna be the most powerful.
Speaker 4 00:22:03 Amen. That's good. Uh,
Speaker 0 00:22:05 Awesome. Good. Well, I hope this has been helpful. I think the, if you follow that formula and you avoid some of those mistakes we were talking about there, I think you're well on your way to doing better sermon illustrations and becoming a better preacher. And what this is all about is reaching more people with the gospel of Jesus Christ and teaching them to obey everything that he's commanded us. So I hope this has been helpful to that end. Uh, if it has, it would mean so much to us. If you would rate, review, subscribe, like do all of those things, uh, down below here, that's how we get the word out there about this podcast. And it does mean a lot to us. Thank you guys so much for being a part of our reach, right family, and we hope to catch you next week. Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online at reach, right studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 00:23:11 Get ready to get.
