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Table of Contents
PREACHING THAT CONNECTS
Power of Everyday Disciple Illustrations
By Craig Brian Larson
One of the most helpful types of sermon illustrations you can use with today’s listeners is what I call "everyday disciple illustrations." What kind of illustrations are these? Why do you want to use them?
After hearing an everyday disciple illustration, a person should think, Oh, that’s how I put that Scripture into practice, or, That’s what humility is. |
Let me give you an example and then explain. Dave Goetz writes:
"My wife, an experienced nurse, recently switched jobs. The change had been a long time coming. Jana was excited about joining two doctors with whom she had previously worked. She was back with ‘family’; she had come home.
"At her first evening at the clinic, a young mother came with her 18-month-old son. He needed his final shot for a routine immunization; his mother came for a physical. Both patients were new to the clinic.
"Jana gave the boy his shot, and his mother took him back to the waiting room where his sister and grandmother sat. The mother then went back to the room for her physical. When Jana went to record the vaccination on the boy’s chart, she noticed that the seal on the vial inside her lab coat was unbroken. Quickly Jana realized she had given the boy the wrong vaccine.
"She had given him a shot from a different vial–a routine vaccination for children. But the boy had already completed that series of shots months earlier. Jana told me she gasped when she realized her mistake and then went into shock, physically numbed by the fierceness of what raged within. Here is the sequence of her thoughts, according to what she told me later:
"No one will ever know. No harm done.
"I can’t tell the doctor. This is my first day on the job. The doctor will think I’m incompetent.
"It can’t hurt him, can it? It doesn’t hurt to be immunized twice for the same thing? But he needs the right vaccine.
"What will the mother say? But I will always know, and so will God.
Everyday disciple illustrations are stories that hearers can identify with and flesh out what it means to follow Jesus. |
"While, the doctor was examining the boy’s mother, Jana weakly paced outside the room. When the doctor walked out of the room, Jana told him her mistake, almost vomiting her confession.
" ‘Whoa. Let me think about this for a moment,’ he said. After a few moments, he walked back into the room, told the mother what happened, and asked her to schedule another time for her child’s immunization. Jana’s anxiety released, she was now free."
Notice six characteristics of this everyday disciple illustration:
1. The essence of this type of illustration is this: it gives an example of how to live the Christian life. These illustrations let people see how to obey a particular Scripture. They flesh out a virtue. After hearing an everyday disciple illustration, a person should think, Oh, that’s how I put that Scripture into practice, or, That’s what humility is. The above example illustrates honesty and integrity.
2. This style of illustration doesn’t necessarily show someone doing it right, as Jana did. But if the person stumbles, the illustration can show how he or she learned through the experience. In fact, everyday disciple illustrations should not have a hero story feel to them. The story of someone deciding to sell everything and becoming a missionary has a valuable place in preaching, but most people need to see ordinary people living for Christ in everyday circumstances. People have trouble identifying with someone doing everything right, because their own lives are a churning jumble of doing right and struggling and sometimes blowing it.
3. People must identify with your illustration. For that reason, most everyday disciple illustrations will be contemporary, not historical. On rare occasions a historical illustration will work if it doesn’t feel dated and is in a setting to which people can relate.
4. For the sake of identification, these illustrations will most often be about a noncelebrity. If the story is about a celebrity, it must be in a situation that normal people face.
We can identify with a story about Steven Curtis Chapman overcoming temptation while watching a TV show; we identify less with him as he struggles with the temptation to be proud as he sings on stage before thousands of people.
5. Everyday disciple illustrations will be stories, not an image, quote, or statistic. Stories give the most compelling examples.
6. The stories will be applied literally, not figuratively as a metaphor. The story about Jana is a literal one about honesty. It would not be an everyday disciple illustration if we used it figuratively, as in: "Just as Jana knew she had made a mistake when she saw that the seal was broken on the vaccine vial, so life gives us signals that we have sinned."
Everyday disciple illustrations are stories that hearers can identify with and flesh out what it means to follow Jesus. Your preaching will gain power to change lives as you use illustrations that share these characteristics because they will show–not just tell–people how to obey God in ways that are relevant to hearers.
Craig Brian Larson is editor of Christianity Today International’s preaching resources–PreachingToday.com and Preaching Today audio–as well as pastor of Lake Shore Church (Assemblies of God) in Chicago, Illinois. He is co-author of Preaching That Connects (Zondervan, 1994).
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