“Whatever was I thinking?”
I’ve said that. And I’ve sometimes thought it about other preachers whose sermon illustrations just got entered into the competition for dumbest story of the year.
By dumb story, we refer to an account of something that distracts from God’s message, or sucks all the air out of the room so that no one hears anything for the next 15 minutes, or overpowers the sermon so the story is all anyone remembers for the next week, or is mind-bogglingly offensive. Or is just plumb stupid, did we say that?
Most of us preachers have been guilty of telling one or two of those over the years. Or a hundred.
Consider this a call for greater discernment in selecting stories and illustrations, parables and news items for our sermons.
1) A story that overpowers the sermon and smothers whatever point you were making needs to be tossed.
Have you heard the one about the dad who went fishing with his son and the boy’s friend?
If you have not heard this one, where have you been? (smiley-face goes here) The other kid was not a Christian, so when the boat capsized and the father could save only one of the two, he grabbed the unsaved child and let his son drown since he knew his son was saved and would go to Heaven. (The sermon is supposed to illustrate something about witnessing, I suppose.)
That is a truly terrible story. And, I can just about guarantee you two things….
1) It did not happen. This surely evolved from some pastor “making up a situation” for his sermon, and then, seeing the effect it had on people, using it again before other audiences. Other preachers picked it up and before long, it went viral.
2) No one heard another thing the preacher said that day. They did the same thing you and I did the first time we heard it, sat there wondering what we would have done in a similar situation, growing angry that such a choice had to be made in the first place, and becoming irritated that the preacher would put that mental burden on us.
Do. Not. Use. That. Story. Ever.
2) A story you like too much and tell too often should be jettisoned.
Telling a story several times to the same congregation causes it to backfire and do precisely the opposite to what you intended.
At our family reunion, a cousin called home to see how things were going. Her daughter gave a report on church that day and the sermon in particular. When she got off the phone, Cousin Annette said, “The pastor told that story of the kid who fell in the well and all the community came together to save her. I know he must have told it a hundred times! He does it to put a guilt trip on all Christians for not working together to save the lost.”
With an impish look, she said, “I’ve heard that story so many times, I now root against the rescuers. Die, kid!”
Not exactly the response the pastor was looking for. But that’s what happens when the preacher overuses a story. It turns off his audience and works against the point he wants to make.
3) A tale that offends anyone with even an ounce of discretion is one your sermon can do without.
At a denominational gathering, the primary speaker, a pastor of a significant church, told a story about his adolescent daughter. “She is a blonde,” he said, “and she is soooo dumb that….” and he went on from there. Mercifully, I have forgotten the involved tale he told about his daughter. The entire time, I was squirming in my seat, unable to believe what I was hearing.
At the end, the preacher said, “I’m just kidding. None of that happened. That was just a joke.”
If one person laughed, I didn’t notice. We were all mortified–for the daughter who was the butt of this story, for the preacher who had no better judgment than to tell it, and for ourselves for having to hear it.
What did he preach that day? I guarantee you no one remembers.
We all have committed bonehead mistakes in the pulpit. I have, and if you stay in the ministry long enough, chances are you will also. Thankfully, God’s people are gracious and will forgive us.
Traveling across the state, I had found a church service on a radio station. The guest preacher of that congregation evidently had not been told that his message was being broadcast into several counties. He clearly thought he was talking to a bunch of “good ol’ boys under a southern shade tree” because he told a racial story using all the slanderous terms for the other race. While I have mercifully forgotten the details of the story, I recall how embarrassing it was even to hear it.
Then, in the middle of the story, there was a long pause. For a moment I thought the station was having trouble.
What happened is that someone got word to the guest preacher that his sermon was being heard throughout that part of the state. It was almost humorous hearing him stammering, back-tracking, and apologizing.
It served him right.
He dropped the rest of that story and went on with his sermon. I guarantee you that’s one message he will never forget. I remember laughing, “Good! He got caught doing something he should not have been doing in the first place.”
The underlying problem, I assume, is that we preachers get so comfortable in the pulpit that we begin to think “this is my place” and “they’ve come to hear me.” Both are major fallacies. The pulpit is the Lord’s and the people are there to worship Him and hear from His word.
My older brother Ron has pastored churches for nearly sixty years. Once when our coal-miner Dad was visiting, the guest evangelist–a preacher of some reputation–spent ten minutes running down the Democrats in the White House. My dad was appropriately offended. Later, he said to Ron and me, “What if a Democrat had been in the congregation and needed to be saved? He would not have heard another word that preacher said after he slammed the President. He should leave politics out of the pulpit.”
Dad was right. As he often was.
We should exercise the greatest of care to see that we honor the Lord with all we say, and that our stories enhance the message rather than detract from it in any way.
As one prone to mispeaking, I find myself praying Psalm 141:3 almost every day of my life: “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; Keep watch over the door of my lips.”