Why Preachers Keep Buying These Collections Instead of Writing Their Own
I spent about four years trying to come up with my own opening illustrations for Sunday messages. It didn't work. The ones that felt natural to me usually sounded forced when I delivered them, and the ones that got laughs typically took twenty minutes of setup for a three-second chuckle. I switched to using published illustration collections, and my sermon prep time dropped from roughly six hours to maybe two and a half. It's a compilation book, part of a series by Bill and Jim Healy, that gathers short anecdotes, jokes, and story illustrations organized by topic. Think of it less as a comedy routine and more as a reference library. You flip to the section on forgiveness, read ten or twelve brief illustrations, and pick the one that fits your text. The book covers common sermon themes like faith, doubt, leadership, relationships, and grace. Each entry is brief — usually a paragraph or two — which means you can scan through dozens in ten minutes. The title itself is a bit misleading if you expect something fresh. The earlier volumes in the series came out decades ago, so some of the cultural references are dated. The "more" and "fresh" in the title refer to additional material added beyond the original collections, but don't expect 2024-level humor. You'll find references to television shows and news events from the nineties and early two thousands. That doesn't ruin the book, but it does mean you'll need to do a light edit on any illustration that depends heavily on its original cultural context.
How to Actually Use This Without Sounding Like You're Reading a Joke Book Aloud
Most people read these illustrations straight off the page, which kills them. The delivery needs to feel like you just remembered this thing that happened, not like you're performing a prepared joke. Here's what I do now. I read the illustration twice before using it. The first read is to understand the point. The second read is to rewrite the opening sentence in my own voice. If the original says something like "A man once walked into a bar and said," I change it to how I'd actually tell the story to a friend. That small tweak makes the difference between a rehearsed sound and something that lands naturally. I also cut roughly thirty percent of the word count from most illustrations. These books pack illustrations with setup detail that nobody needs. If the point is about pride, you don't need to describe the restaurant, the waiter, or what the man was wearing. You need the moment where the pride shows up, and then you move to the application. In practice, trimming an illustration from two paragraphs down to one cuts the risk of the audience checking out halfway through.
The trickiest part is the transition into the illustration. Don't announce it. Don't say "Here's a story about humility." Just start telling the story. Your congregation will figure out what category it belongs to once you're forty seconds in. Announcing it beforehand puts them in a critical frame of mind where they're waiting for the punchline instead of being absorbed in the narrative.
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Common Problems and What to Do About Them
The biggest issue I ran into was the theological mismatch. Some illustrations in these collections are generic inspirational stories, not specifically Christian. A story about a business leader showing integrity isn't wrong, but it won't connect to a passage about sanctification the way a story grounded in biblical language will. I learned to flag any illustration that doesn't have an obvious bridge to scripture and either skip it or rewrite the application to make the connection explicit. Another problem is the humor level. Some preachers use these collections expecting to make people laugh, but the material is more dryly amusing than genuinely funny. If your congregation expects comedy, these illustrations will land softer than you want. If your congregation is fine with a light smile while they absorb a point, the material works well. Know your audience before you commit to an illustration. I also discovered that certain illustrations don't age well, and I found this out the hard way during a funeral service. I used an illustration about loss that referenced a specific technology that had become obsolete by the time I got there. The audience looked confused rather than moved. I had to pivot quickly and reframe the point. Since then, I check the publication date of any illustration and avoid anything that depends on a specific trend or technology unless I'm comfortable updating it myself.
What the Book Doesn't Do Well
It won't write your sermon. It won't handle complex theological arguments or provide exegetical support. It's a source of illustrative material, nothing more. Some people buy these collections hoping they'll solve the problem of having nothing to say, which they won't. The illustrations are seasoning, not the main course. If your sermon lacks structure or depth, adding a funny story won't fix that. The organization by topic is helpful but not precise. You might search for illustrations about patience and find entries filed under "frustration" or "waiting." You need to read broadly within a category. This takes extra time during prep, which partly offsets the efficiency gain of not writing from scratch. There's also the issue of overuse. If you pull the same popular illustrations from these books every month, your congregation will notice. People remember stories. I've heard listeners point out that a certain illustration was used three Sundays in a row by different speakers at different churches, which suggests the same pool of popular material circulates widely through these collections.
A Practical Workflow That Actually Saves Time
Here's the process I settled on after the trial-and-error phase. Start with the sermon text. Know what you're preaching before you look at any illustrations. Flip to the relevant topic in the book. Scan three or four illustrations. Pick one that resonates. Rewrite the opening and cut the fat. Test it out loud. If it takes more than forty-five seconds to tell, cut it further. If it requires explanation beyond the story itself, abandon it and find another. This workflow takes about twenty minutes for a well-prepared preacher who knows their material. A preacher who is still developing the sermon itself might spend an hour. Either way, it's faster than writing an original illustration from scratch, which typically takes me forty-five to ninety minutes depending on whether the idea comes easily.
The book is available through major online retailers and often through church supply catalogs. It's not free, but at a typical retail price it's cheaper than replacing your entire illustration library every few years. If you're looking for something similar with more contemporary material, there are updated editions and companion volumes that refresh some of the older content, though they cover the same basic format. The real value isn't in collecting these illustrations. It's in using them honestly and knowing when to leave them on the shelf. A single well-placed illustration in a sermon that otherwise has substance is worth more than ten illustrations strung together in a sermon that has none. That's the thing nobody tells you about these reference books, and it's the thing that determines whether they actually improve your speaking or just fill dead air.
