I’ve been aware of my greatest “technical” weakness in preaching since the first time I stepped into the pulpit: Illustrations. I’m not a flowery writer. I’m analytical and detailed…not a storyteller. My wife comes from a family of storytellers. I don’t.

But even though I’ve known about this weakness from a number of years, I haven’t tried to address it in any meaningful way. I have always felt that it’s something that will just be hit and miss in my preaching because I’m just not very good at it. Recently, though, my wife and I were talking about it and I realized that just because illustrating is not my strength doesn’t mean that I can abandon efforts for improvement. I need to make strides in this area for the sake of the gospel.

So, I’ve at least started addressing it. Unsure where to start, I began to look for something to read on the topic and came across Bryan Chapell’s Using Illustrations to Preach with Power. I became aware that Chapell has incorporated much of this book into one of my favorite “how to” preaching books, Christ-Centered Preaching (so I’ve read some of this material previously). In any case, I’m only about halfway through it right now. I’m sure that I’ll post some notes once I’m done reading it…but I wanted to at least get some thoughts down right now. So far, this little section has been the most helpful to me. Chapell writes on page 92:

The preacher who wants to create illustrations must cultivate the ability to isolate and associate experiences. To do this, the common way of looking at the world…must cease. Every passing form, color, and shadow holds illustrative promise. The preacher must look at the world marching past the eyes as a photographer looks through a camera, constantly framing one moment, one event, one sequence after another. What looks common to the ordinary eye is significant to the artist…Preachers should be continually taking snapshots of both life’s great and commonplace events so that they may relate both to the awe and to the tedium their listeners’ experience. Nothing of life goes by without examination. If you hope to illustrate well, do not wait passively for the world to offer you something significant to note. Rather, steal from the world the treasures others do not notice or do not have the opportunity to display.

This little passage gave me hope. Hope that I don’t have to be a great storyteller. Instead, I just need to be committed to careful observation and be ready to plunder those treasures that others may not see. I need to train my eye. I hope and pray that I’ll be able to learn to think in illustrations, taking snapshots of both the mundane and the grandiose so that I can better communicate the message of the gospel.