Tag Archives: funny
My five best sermon illustrations (Part 2)
Alright, #4 of my best/favorite sermon illustrations is one that’s slightly embarrassing. Now let me go on record of saying that I am not scared of frogs, the way I am of say snakes, or the creepy little dead girl from the ring. But I’m not liking them on Facebook either. Ok that said here’s one of my favorite all-time illustrations; Shower Frog.
I used to live in a flood zone in Walnut Ridge which was crazy to see when big storms would come through. Well one particular time when most of the water had subsided my carport, which contained the back door and primary means of access to the house, turned into a tree frog habitat. Now I’m not especially scared of frogs but these little tree frogs held you in suspense. Often times without warning they would leap off the safe perch they had far away from me and descend down upon their prey. One particular night there were several frogs on the glass window and hitched a ride in on my neighbor as he came in. We thought we got them out, but later that evening I saw one make a break for the hall way. Kiz, who I mentioned in the previous post, my golden retriever quickly ended the intruders existence by chasing it down the hall and then spearing it with his claw as it tried to climb the wall. Being very proud of the dog I praised him and went to get a dustpan or something to dispose of the frog carcass. When I return my happy dog burped at me and apparently thought I’d be excite that he helped clean up (he ate it). A couple days later another couple frogs made their way inside, and again I apparently don’t see well cause I missed one. This one I found as I entered the bathroom. Perched high in the corner above the toilet there he was, and thus began the hostage situation. If I had been a normal male I would have grabbed the frog and flushed him, but being the coward that I am I couldn’t. In fact, for nearly a week this frog held me in terror every time “nature called”, I could walk to that bathroom at 3am groggy and half awake and the second my feet hit the tile I was alert and identifying the whereabouts of my captor. I remember multiple times being scared out of my wits as he leaped from within the creases of the shower curtain. Then one night he thought he had me. I walk into the bathroom and like normal scan the corner above the toilet and shake the shower curtain, to attempt to force him to the back wall of the shower, only I can’t find him. While I hoped he’d starved to death trapped in that bathroom and began to frantically look about the room. With my eyes darting back and forth my heart rate rose as I turned back and saw him hovering above door trapping me inside the restroom. I hate to admit it but for a second I started to wonder how long would I have to sit before someone came looking for me. Then it occurred to me that what at first appeared to be a brilliant tactical maneuver was actually a colossal mistake. I grabbed a towel and with a vengeful passion snapped it at that frog I knocked it to the ground and out into the hall. Which immediately reminded me of well the last one ended and so I hollered for the dog! Nearly the almost exact same scenario took place. Frog comes in, dog chases frog, dog stabs frog, I go to get a dustpan, dog eats frog. I was elated! I gave that dog the highest praises of his life that night, and for two days I peed whenever I wanted without anxiety. The third day after being released from Shower Frog’s tyranny while I was taking a shower I reached for the shampoo and out sprung that guerilla war trained frog! I jumped out of the shower and returned to life of captivity. Slave to the fear of a frog. Now really what should have happened when I saw the frog if I did not want it cohabiting my home. Exactly, I should have simply picked up the frog. I can assure you that I wanted to see that frog leave with every fiber of my being, I talked about how I wished it would come to understand it was in a place it didn’t belong. I did all the things you can do with words, but I did not pick up the frog. So it stayed there in the same condition it was in. Too often as believers we are exactly like I was, slaves to our fear. Most of would honestly say that we desire to see people come to know Christ, in the same way that I desired the frog to be gone. But also in the same manner we refuse to be the instrument of that. We are paralyzed by fear and can’t step out and share. It’s time to remember that the first part of the Great Commission is to “Go and make disciples” and you become a disciple when you drop your life and follow Jesus. So Jesus is asking us to open our mouths and share about who he is. It’s time to let the Holy Spirit give you the courage to pick up the frog in your life and start sharing Jesus.
My best five sermon illustrations (Part 1)
When Dr. Platt entered my world he not only messed up what I did with my personal time, he jacked with the way I presented the Gospel. For the record God had begun this previously earlier, but it was Dr. Platt that showed me how to almost completely annihilate the personal funny story from my messages. So in light of that I want to give you my best/favorite sermon illustrations.
So here we go, we’ll start at the bottom and move on up a post at a time:
My dog & God have the same nature
I have a golden retriever named Melchizedek Rothacher King of Salem (we call him Kiz), he’s ten years old now and his nature is the same since being a puppy. He LOVES physical contact! He lives outside and hasn’t had a bath since Clinton was president, so to say he’s dirty is probably an understatement. If you sit outside somewhere and he sees you he’s coming for you, and he is not content with casual pat my back attention, he wants to be up in your lap. Its really funny to watch cause he starts at a normal proximity to you and then slowly backs up, and backs up, and backs up until he is as close to you as possible without being up in your lap. I think God is exactly like that in His desire to know us. He is not ok with a casual safe distance, He wants to be so close that you can’t tell where you stop and God starts. I had friend tell me one time that “you’re as close to God as you want to be” so how close are you and God?
Got a favorite illustration to share? Tell us in the comments.
Persevere… victory is at hand
As I write this I just finished an hour long nap battle with my two and a half year old. She’s at the age where she needs a nap, or its crabby central, but no longer willingly lays in her bed. So for the past hour I’ve been persevering, and applying the necessary resolve to ensure she goes to sleep. As I struggled with not losing my temper and remaining calm God used this rather humorous resistance to encourage me, and hopefully you.
I started in the hall, like normal, returning the runaway to her bed the moment she left the bed, and after six minutes I had picked that little creature up eighteen times and returned her to her bed. Then she broke me, I could no longer handle the giggling, smiling little girl and her no naptime game, and I was benched. I hate to admit it but my wife was right to pull me, I had given up on the plan, lost focus and perspective and needed to cool off downstairs with the non napping children. But fifteen minutes later, when my wife had also run out of willpower, I returned to the contest with a fresh resolve and a willingness to fluctuate the strategy if need be to emerge victorious.
Eventually I simply outlasted her, she ran out energy, and simply gave in and fell asleep. It took me another forty minutes but as I sit here writing, she is up there sleeping and that’s encouraging. It’s encouraging because youth ministry is much like a battle, one where you can get so frustrated that you snap, lose your cool and need to sit out for a while and regroup. It’s important to be flexible about the how but not about the what. I was not going to yield to the sleep defying toddler and allow her to do what she pleased; she was going to take a nap. In the same manner teenagers in my youth ministry will hear about Jesus. They may not hear it the same way everytime or in the same program, trip, service but they will hear about it. Naptime today did not go as planned, and you will find that youth ministry unfortunately is too often this way. It’s a battle; and far too often one we feel as though we are losing, but there’s good news, there is hope for success, if we’re willing to be creative and unrelenting we will win.
Million Miles Film Contest
Hey we are entered in author Don Miller’s Million Miles short film contest, and I’m asking for your help. Here’s how you can help, Vote!!! You can vote once a day from each computer you can get access to (ie. your home, your work, your iPhone). Please click the link below and click on the thumbs up! Then if you don’t mind please let your friends know to vote too. Post it on your facebook, twitter it out, call your friends, mass email, whatever ways you can think of. It will be deeply appreciated:
Here’s the link to the video: http://bit.yl/9DeruK
Announcements: Video Style
So we’ve all been there in front of the room of teenagers trying to remind them of the deadline for Summer Camp or the cost of bowling, and we all know the difficulty in actually relaying the information. I’ve seen it done a variety of ways and I’ve even done it multiple ways myself. I have however found that in my opinion the video announcements have been the most effective. Why? Because for some reason we’re trained to watch whats on the screen as if its more important than the people around us. I say let’s take advantage of this poor culture shift and at minimum relay your important information. Like when the “Listening to other people class” begins.
I’ve always called our video announcements the News (FBC NEWS, Underground NEWS, etc.) but feel free to call it whatever “Update” “Info” whatever sounds catchy to you. In my nearly six years here at Parkers Chapel I’ve done the news three distinct yet similar ways, and I wanted to share them with you to give you an example of what I’m talking about.
2004/2005
When I first started back in the fall 2004 and into through the 2005 school year and summer I found student volunteers to use as news anchors.
Advantages: I believe that this way is probably the most effective way to get your teens to pay attention. They are more likely to listen to their classmate than you or something else.
Disadvantages: You totally have to compete with the competitive lives of your students. Which makes it extremely difficult to get both of your anchors there at the same time. Also, it relies on the fact that you have some charismatic teens to deliver your announcements. Its also another one of the those areas where you should hold your students to a higher level of accountability spiritually if your going to frequently have them in front of their peers.
Note* I have found that the best way to deal with the scheduling is to plan out your announcements several weeks in advance have your students bring multiple outfits and then film for an hour or two and do several months worth of announcements. You might miss the impromptu announcement but you’ll nail the majority which is better than not having news at all one week cause you couldn’t work out the scheduling.
Bonus: This video contains another great way to captivate your teens, show them footage of themselves. The fear factor montage was shot at our weekly games and then we simply plugged it in the video.
2006/2007
For the majority of 2006 & 2007 I was pressed for time and scheduling with my news anchors after moving between several I became desperate to find actors with schedules that were wide open in fact they didn’t even have to be breathing or move for that matter. I have some random toys on my shelves in my office so I grabbed Smokey the Bear & Yoda and shot a few different angles of them on my desk with some blue construction paper behind them and then went in and added voices. Please forgive the sound, its sloppy I know.
Advantages: The obvious advantage here is that after the initial filming unless you just have a desire to change the background you don’t have to ever film again which brings the time it takes to produce an announcement clip way down. Obvious plus, who couldn’t use more time. As well it lets you wait until the night before or morning of to finalize your video giving you the most up to date announcements (None slide through).
Disadvantages: Your dialog has to be pretty captivating. Since there is no actual people on the screen to watch you’ll most likely need a gimmick of some sort (Our students loved Yoda’s backward speech and bluntness towards the bear). The other obvious disadvantage is if you don’t do or are uncomfortable doing voices. In my opinion as is witnessed here, they don’t have to be good. In fact they might actually be funnier if they aren’t so grab a Hulk Hogan pillow or a troll doll (you might wanna put some pants on it) and give it a shot.
Note* Initially we had a mini plot-line between the bear & Yoda where they didn’t like each other and I found random videos like the bear getting on the top of a power pole touches the transformer and is blown off (search youtube a definite must see), or a street performer dressed as Yoda singing Britney Spears (Again Youtube should have it otherwise google it). Also, at the end you’ll notice that Yoda mentions a student (little Austin Collins) and we threw up a pic from Kindergarten). That started as Yoda showing off his ability to use the force, and he made a red dot appear and then disappear and then all of sudden he says Alan Mooney and the picture of one of our seniors popped up. Everyone laughed so hard that the next week I made him bring up Alan Mooney again, and then little Alan Mooney which was his kindergarten picture that I got out of a kids year book. This brought on even more laughter and the next week in anticipation of the end after Yoda says may the force be with you he’d say little so and so and throw up their picture to the surprise of the student and delight of the rest. A perfect example of the gimmick or hook that I mentioned in the Disadvantages section.
Bonus: The special feature is another way to keep their focus. This was around the time that Napoleon Dynamite was big so these Utah State Fair videos were a great example of clean funny stuff. Youtube is a great resource for this. Search for Super Bowl ads, crazy videos, people falling down is always great. Find something you think is funny and around 1 – 2 minutes.
2009/2010
For the later part of 2007 and most 2008 when we did the news I went back to using students (junior highers that were easier to schedule), but in the winter of 2009 I found LT. LT is a freeware program from crowd control games I thoroughly enjoy him.
Advantages: All the simplicity of Yoda & Smokey with the bonus of a moving gimmick built in. LT is very simple to operate, he has multiple one button reactions for example pressing #1 makes him smile goofy, #2 makes him look surprised like he’s saying “OOOOOOHHHH”
Disadvantages: The major disadvantage for using LT as your spokesperson is that he’s designed to be used live. What that means is you most likely will need another program in order to capture his movements and make him available for editing. I use a simple program called Snagit which ran me about $50.00 so while LT is free to use him, this way may not be.
Note* I have found that he has much more possibilities because of being designed to use him live. For instance he could Emcee a conference or awards night or DNOW or whatever you wanted to use him for, plus live he could call out a student thats not paying attention and freak everyone out. However you use him he is worth the download.
Bonus: LT has three preset backgrounds and four shirts as well as the black screen background and the green screen. So if your editing software has green screen capabilities then you can make LT be anywhere.
Well that wraps up this lengthy yet informative post on the art of video announcements. I suggest you try out whatever method will work best for you and get filming! Trust me announcements will neve be the same.
