I’m not going to start this off with a cute, catchy intro. The subject is far too important to waste any time on preliminaries. Let’s get into it.

How did the previous paragraph make you feel? Not great? You need your precious intro, don’t you? A little intro to take the edge off? The intro is like your security blanket, isn’t it?

What would we do without the catchy intro? I, for one, would have zoned out completely from a lot of Sunday sermons at church.

We need the intro. And we need the strategically placed sermon illustration to bring the scripture to life and help drive home the point.

Here are the most memorable sermon introductions and illustrations that I have ever heard. They are scored for effectiveness (did it drive home the point?) and believability (did it really happen?).

Reese’s

This was from a youth pastor, although I can’t remember who he was. I think he was visiting from another church.

He described going to his mom’s house for dinner. He was sitting in her living room and she was finishing up the food prep in the kitchen.

Here’s the thing, though. Next to his chair in the living room, there was a table. And on that table, there was a lace doily. On that doily was a glass dish. And in that dish was a heaping pile of Reese’s peanut butter cups. They were the small ones with shiny foil wrappers.

While he was waiting for dinner, he ate a Reese’s. It’s so small, and he was so hungry, that he had another. But two isn’t that much, so he had a third. Then a fourth, a fifth, and so on.

When it was time to come to the table and eat this delicious dinner, he wasn’t really hungry any more. His mom said, “What’s the matter, aren’t you very hungry?” He was hungry at one point, but he spoiled his dinner by eating the mini Reese’s.

Effectiveness: 0/5. I do not remember what point he made with this sermon illustration.

Believability: 4/5. I believe this really did happen, but I suspect he embellished a bit in order to make his point (whatever that may have been). Would a grown man really be wolfing down Reese’s like there was no tomorrow while his mom put the finishing touches on dinner? Actually, I take that back. 5/5

 

Crispy Critters

This was one of my youth pastors. He was hungry one morning, so he poured himself a bowl of Crispy Critters cereal and dumped some milk on it. It tasted kind of funny to him the first few bites, but he was so hungry, he just kept eating. After a while, he didn’t think anything of it. He got used to it.

At this point, his wife came in the room and said, “You didn’t use that milk, did you?”

He said, “Huh?”

She said, “I hope you didn’t use the milk in the fridge. It’s spoiled.”

Effectiveness: 5/5. This was an illustration of committing a sin. At first, your conscience tells you “this isn’t right,” but if you block it out long enough, you don’t think about it anymore.

Believability: 4/5. I think it probably happened. I sometimes wonder, though, if he chose to say a brand of cereal (Crispy Critters) which would be more relatable to us middle schoolers. I’m not saying a man in his 30’s is above eating sugar cereal, but I do wonder sometimes if it was actually raisin bran or shredded wheat.

 

Plastic Produce Bag

This was from one of the associate pastors at the church I attended during college. He was out at the grocery store and he was trying to get some vegetables for his wife.

He ripped a plastic produce bag off the roll and was trying to open it up. He was pulling it, stretching it, flipping it around. He could not get it open.

Eventually, he realized a woman of a certain age was watching him. She said, “Here,” took the bag, licked her thumb and forefinger ever so slightly, whipped that bag open in two seconds flat, and handed it back to him.

Effectiveness: 0/5. I do not know what point he made with this story. I think he was just warming up the crowd with something funny before diving in to the substance of the sermon.

Believability: 5/5. This man was married and from the World War II generation. I have every reason to believe he had no clue what to do at the grocery store.

 

Jelly on the Floor

The head pastor at my church growing up told this story. Years ago, he had been a newly hired youth pastor at Dave Burnham’s church in Akron, Ohio.

At work one day, he was walking to the drinking fountain and dodged a big glob of jelly on the floor that somebody had dropped.

Dave Burnham was at the drinking fountain taking a drink. As usual, he was dressed in a three piece suit, shoes shined like mirrors. He turned around from the drinking fountain, reached into his breast pocket, pulled out an immaculate white handkerchief, crouched down to the floor, and wiped up the glob of jelly. He made brief eye contact with my pastor and walked on past.

Effectiveness: 5/5. This is an illustration of a servant leader. “The last shall be first” and “the least of these shall be the greatest.” It’s all well and good to talk about being humble and serving your fellow man and woman, but this story paints a vivid picture of what that might look like in practice.

Believability: 5/5. It’s too specific of a story to be made up, in my opinion. Could the jelly have been placed there on purpose, though, as part of a new employee orientation? That is food for thought.

 

Bengals Jacket

This same pastor has a son and a daughter, and the son is a few years older than me. He told the story that when they lived in Ohio, his son (a little kid at the time) had a Cincinnati Bengals jacket. They lived in Akron, which is closer to Cleveland and is therefore full of Browns fans.

He and his son were walking through the mall one day and a man stopped, looked at the boy, and sneered something to the effect of “Get out of here, Bengals fan!”

Effectiveness: 2/5. I don’t remember the point he made with this story, but it had to do with football, so it grabbed my attention. I believe he was talking about putting aside petty differences and divisions and accepting one another.

Believability: 5/5. This is quite likely to have happened, as my son (two years old at the time) once got heckled for wearing a White Sox hat at the farmer’s market. The heckler was a Cubs fan, the year was 2016, and a month or two later, I did not root for the Cubs in that year’s World Series. (The heckler pointed at my son’s hat and yelled, “That’s child abuse!” Then he laughed at his own joke like the lunch lady in “Billy Madison.”)

 

Desert Island

Here is one final illustration from my pastor growing up. It’s about a guy who crashed his boat and was stranded on a desert island for years and years.

One day, a second boat crashed and the passenger swam ashore. The first guy welcomed him and showed him around. “This is where I fish. Over here is my house. This is my garden. This is my tool shed. This is the church where I worship on Sundays.”

The new guy said, “What’s that other building over there?” and he pointed off in the distance.

The first guy said, “Oh, that’s where I used to go to church.”

Effectiveness: 3/5. I’m not certain what the point was. I think it was about being a fickle churchgoer and how it’s better to invest in your church and make the best of it, rather than bouncing around from church to church.

Believability: 0/5. It is clearly fictional.

 

No Intro

The pastor at the church I attended after college once began a sermon like I began this blog post. He said, “I don’t have a joke or a story to start out with. This is a serious topic we’re studying today, this is God’s word, so let’s get into it.” And then he began preaching.

Effectiveness: 0/5. It caught my attention at the time because it was a change of pace. Nevertheless, it gave me nothing with which to anchor the rest of the sermon. I couldn’t begin to imagine what topic or scripture he preached on that day.

Believability: Not applicable.

 

You have seen how it feels when someone skips the ever-important intro. Now I am going to spring another new one on you: no conclusion.

How’s that grab you?

P.S. Please feel free to let me know about any sermon illustration that has stuck with you for as long as these have stuck with me.

P.P.S. The “no intro” pastor is now a disgraced pastor who was dismissed from that church for financial malfeasance. He wasn’t fired for the “no intro” gambit, although it couldn’t have helped. When in doubt, do an intro.