“The talk had been on confession of sin, and the effect of it had been the equivalent of dropping a hand grenade in your average living room goldfish bowl.”
Start the Journey at the Right End
“We need to start where the people are, rather than where we hope to take them.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 70
One Like Unto the Other
“Martin had been far more discreet about his amours than Chad had been, and speaking quantitatively, if illegitimate dalliances were corn, his Nebraskan combine had not cut so wide a swath, and this meant that many on the leadership team did not even know that they were getting a minister like unto Chad.”
The Size of the Front Porch
“A good introduction serves at least three purposes.First, it awakes interest, stimulates curiosity and makes us long to know God’s perspective on this matter. Secondly, it enables the listeners to sense that they are listening to someone who is qualified to speak for God from this text . . . Thirdly, it introduces the dominant idea and leads the hearers into it”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, pp. 69-70
Quite a Bit of Butterscotch
“This was not really supposed to mean anything in particular, but the elders were not about to press him on it. All they wanted was for smooth words to flow over them (and everybody else in the audience) like molten butterscotch, and it was looking as though they were going to get everything they were paying for, which was quite a bit of butterscotch.”
Circling the Airport
“Some of us seem incapable of concluding anything, let alone our sermons! We circle around, like a plane without instruments on a foggy day, unable to land.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 66
The Wrong Kind of Together
“He was professional, cut, chiseled. His slacks had a crease in them that could cut weeds if he walked through a field of tall grass, not that he did this very often. His one idiosyncratic feature was that he always looked like he was chewing beef jerky whenever he talked, but most people who even noticed it thought it made him look masculine in that jaw-jutty way that you see in Eddie Bauer catalogs.”
No, Not at All
“Every preacher must be constantly on the lookout for illustrations. Not that we read books and listen to people only to collect sermon material!”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 65
Brim Full
“Radavic couldn’t quite catch what he was saying, but Bradford could see the prosecutor’s neck get bigger. He had never seen a neck so full of righteousness” ().
Making Illustrations Walk on Their Hind Legs
“Illustrations transform the abstract into the concrete, the ancient into the present, the unfamiliar into the familiar, the general into the particular, the vague into the precise, the unreal into the real, and the invisible into the visible” ().
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 63