Tom Carter

How to Have Fresh Sermon Illustrations for Years to Come

If you want to stay in your church for a long time, you need to deliver to your congregation more than good sermons. You need to give them more than a careful exegesis of the biblical text. You need to do more than apply the passage you’re preaching on in personal ways to the lives of your people.

You need to give them fresh illustrations every week.

You know what illustrations are:

· stories from your life

· stories from the news

· positive stories from the lives of your own church members

· stories from the lives of people your church members may not know but whom you know

· stories from the lives of people in history

· poems

· relevant quotations

· survey results about Christians, churches, nonbelievers, etc.

· and on and on

Charles Spurgeon compared illustrations in preaching to open windows in a house. If the windows in the house remain closed, the house becomes stuffy, stagnant, and uncomfortable. But an open window lets fresh air and sunlight into the room. Every sermon needs fresh air to blow over it and sunlight to shine on it, and that’s why sermon illustrations are so important.

The sermons of some preachers are nothing but stories. I always feel cheated when I hear sermons like that, and I don’t recommend that you preach that way. We preachers must walk a tightrope by balancing our exposition of the text with our illustrations and applications of its meaning. But still, we need some illustrations in our sermons. In the sermons on this website you’ll see how I try to strike that balance.

I’ve been the senior pastor at the First Baptist Church of Dinuba, California, since 1982. I’m convinced I never would have lasted that long if I had not had my “sermon file.” If I had simply relied on my memory to come up with sermon illustrations, I would be unable to hold my listeners’ attention, and I probably would also have been unable to hold down my position as the pastor of the church. In the course of my sermons, my people would have been thinking, Here comes that illustration about the flood in his house again! I’ll bet we’ve heard that dozens of times.

But even after all these years, I can still grab their attention with fresh illustrations they’ve never heard before. Why? Because I’ve been gathering illustrations every week since I was a young man.

In my office I have 34 file cabinets for 3 x 5 index cards. Each drawer in these cabinets is 5.25 inches wide and 16 inches deep. I have tens of thousands of index cards in those 34 drawers—and each card has some kind of sermon illustration on it.

I read a lot, and as I read a book or magazine, I mark off sections on the pages, and then in the margin I’ll give that section a heading in my own handwriting. The heading might be “Evangelism” or “Prayer, answered” or “Will, God’s” or “Jesus, deity of.” When I finish reading the book or magazine, I give it to my secretary. She turns each page, photocopies the pages that have my handwriting in the margins, cuts out the parts of the text I’ve marked off, pastes that section on a card, and at the top of the card writes the heading I wrote in the margin of the book or magazine. Then she files the cards in my index-card cabinets.

In the early years of my ministry, I had no secretary, so I did all the work myself. But it was worth it!

I gather illustrations from places besides books and magazines. I read the newspaper every day and sometimes cut out articles. If I’m going to quote a newspaper article in my sermon, I’ll hold the cut-out article up for the worshipers to see and then read it. I also gather illustrations from things I hear people say, either to me directly, on the radio, on TV, etc. Sometimes I give an illustration from a counseling sessions (but I go to great lengths to conceal the identity of people in my stories of counseling sessions). And yes, sometimes I hear another pastor give a fantastic illustration, and I’ll write it down on a card.

I actually have two file systems. The first is a topical file that goes from A-Z, and the second is a biblical file that goes from Genesis-Revelation. Some illustrations are a perfect fit for a Bible verse, so I’ll write that verse on the top of the card as the heading for that illustration.

If I’m preparing a sermon on faith, I’ll look in my file under that topic and see my illustrations on faith. Right now my file contains perhaps 200 cards on faith and its sub-topics. Here are the sub-topics in my file:

· faith, childlike

· faith, counterfeit

· faith definition of

· faith example of

· faith, gift from God

· faith hindrances to

· faith, importance of

· faith ingredients of

· faith, object of

· faith, strength of

· faith, test of

· faith and works

· faith promise

Sometimes I hear a great illustration, and I feel lazy about writing it down on a card and putting it in my file. But then I think, I have to do this if I want to prevent my listeners from becoming bored with me. I have to do this if I want to stay in the church for the long haul—and I do want that!

I recommend you think the same way.

When I use a sermon illustration, I write on the back of the card the Scripture passage of the sermon I used it in. In another file—my file of sermons—I can see the date on which I preached that sermon. Sometimes I find a great illustration, then look on the back of the card and see that I’ve already used that illustration two times in the last four years, so I won’t use it again. Some illustrations are so choice they bear repeating, but we preachers have to be careful about how many times and how often we repeat them.

What about illustrations that come from the Bible? I use them often, but our people don’t live in Bible times, and that’s why we need to connect them to our teaching first by means of modern illustrations.

Boring preachers are usually those who rely on their memory to think of sermon illustrations. Interesting preachers are usually those who do the hard work not only of careful exegesis of the text but also of being on the lookout for, writing down, and saving sermon illustrations.