You can also find illustrations in poems or songs, but follow this one rule: don't read them. If you use a poem, memorize it and deliver it well. If you can't memorize it, just eliminate it. If you refer to a song, quote it without reading it. Better yet, sing it — but only if you have a voice that will help and not hurt your sermon. You really don't want to make the audience uncomfortable on your behalf because you cannot sing but try it anyway.

While you may find some great material in statistics, our advice is to avoid them unless you can present them visually. Most people just can't digest statistics, especially many of them in rapid succession. If you feel like you simply must cite some stats, use them sparingly and make sure that you can actually document them.

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Once again, the best place to look for illustrations is in the thousands of apparently ordinary things that happen to you. The trick is to record them, and then to relate them to the subjects you find in your homiletical crosshairs.

I was invited to speak at a deacons' banquet at a large church in the deep South, a job I relished because I love deacons and also I had tremendous love and respect for the pastor. At the close of the banquet the chairman of deacons began to thank the people who had worked hard to make the dinner happen, and he presented each one with a small gift. I was more than a little surprised when he called my name and asked me to return to the lectern to accept a token of their appreciation. I thanked him, took the gift back to my seat, but thought no more about it for the time being.

A staff member was driving me back to my hotel when I began to wonder what was in the neatly wrapped white package. Shaking it and weighing it, I guessed that they had given me a nice paperweight or desk plaque. Sensing my curiosity, he suggested that I open it. "Let's see what you got!"

"Why not?" I wondered aloud, and began to rip through the perfectly folded wrapping.

Soon I found myself gazing at a beautiful red box, but I opened it without particularly noticing the name inscribed on the outside. "It's a pen!" I said, but the staff member driving the car was already way ahead of me.

"Oh my goodness!" he exclaimed. "They gave you a Dupont!'

"What's a Dupont?" I wondered aloud, thinking to myself that I have always been a Bic kind of guy.

"That's a $500 pen!" he informed me, and proceeded to tell me all about my pen. "That's the Orpheo fountain pen. It takes cartridges or it comes with an adapter pump for an ink well. That is a gold nib, gold trim, and Chinese black lacquer. S. T Dupont is a French company known for making luxury items, and you, my friend, just got one of their best pens."

Wow! I couldn't believe it. I had never even heard of S. T. Dupont before that night, but as soon as I got back to the hotel room, I got on the internet and read all about the company, my pen; Chinese lacquer, and the fine cobalt blue ink that I had to order. I was hooked. I loved my pen. I treated it like we had given birth to another child! No more cheap Bics for me. I had arrived.