Preachers: avoiding the illustrations trap

Peter Mead writes about the challenges of using sermon illustrations.

In some preaching you do get the sense that the text serves as an introduction to the next illustration. Personally, I don’t believe the text itself is boring and in need of our help to make it interesting. I do believe that a lot of preaching somehow seeks to explain texts without really entering into them. The text is offered at arms length as exhibit A, but is not a living and active revelation in which the preaching thereof engages the whole listener in an encounter with God. (I’m not really arguing for some kind of neo-orthodox “text becoming word” concept here, but I am suggesting that the Bible is written with affective and emotive function in the different biblical genre that requires it to be somehow experienced and well-understood – as opposed to “mentally understood” from a safe distance leaving the heart largely untouched.)

Exactly. Peter's article is a reminder of why I enjoy his blog so very much.