The Five Craziest Illustrations I've Used in Sermons

This past Sunday morning at church, I found myself holding a bow armed with a flaming arrow pointed at a box I was about to shoot.  At the time, I was thinking, "This might be the strangest thing I've ever done at church."  Then, I started to remember all of the other bizarre things I've done over the years...

Smashing Eggs on a Table (My First Time Preaching in Big Church)

The first time I ever preached in adult worship was on the subject of HOPE.  My introduction built tension based around the idea that all of us will face trials in life. From there, I brought up the different places people put their hope.  I wanted to illustrate how, when you put your hope in something other than Christ when trials come, you don't have a foundation which can stand the stress.

To illustrate this point, I would name something people put their hope in, place an egg on a table, and then smash the egg with my hand.

As it turns out, when you smash an egg, it makes a big mess.  The front row got a nice egg sprinkling, and so did the band's equipment.

This was my introduction to my current church.

Pouring a Wheelbarrow Full of Popcorn on the Stage (My 2nd Time Preaching in Big Church)  ...I should mention that I set my microwave on fire popping the popcorn.

A month later, I was invited back to preach on multiplication.  For the sermon, I wanted to visually show how big our church was in comparison to our city. At the time, there were 17,000 people in our city.  So, I wanted to find some way to show 17,000 of something.

After doing some super dooper scientific google searches to discover how to quickly count out 17,000 popcorn kernels by weight, I started popping popcorn.

Unfortunately, I made a very stupid mistake and started trying to pop my kernels in a gift bag with a metal handle.  30 seconds later, my microwave erupted in flames.

At the time, I was watching a TV show with my wife.  When I turned my head and noticed a glowing orange color coming from my microwave, I screamed in panic and ran to the kitchen.  For some reason, this freaked my wife out...then she saw the flames and she screamed and freaked out.

This picture is from a different time I did this same silly illustration.

Fun Fact

This was also the most expensive illustration I've ever pulled off.  Of course, that's because I had to buy a new microwave.

Using an Actual Cow Tongue as a Prop

As you can see from the picture, this was from a series on the book of James. When we hit chapter 3, it was time to preach on the power of the tongue.  I wanted to do something which would catch people's attention and, the next thing you know, I was purchasing a cow tongue.

This was purely about shock value, and it had no real value besides keeping people's attention.

Accidentally Smashing a Table in Half for an Illustration

As a young pastor/preacher, I was highly cynical towards goofy Christian culture, and this manifested itself in a number of over-the-top illustrations.  On this occasion, I decided to smash hokey Christian kitsch items with a contraption that a friend of mine built to smash things (I don't recall why. but he used it at his job at Dell).  The device was essentially just a pole that weights would slide down and smash things.  With each item we smashed, we kept adding more and more weight.  It never occurred to us that we were dropping all these weights on a table.

Well, eventually, the table had enough and split in half.

Post by The Exchange.

Shooting a Flaming Arrow at a Box Containing Someone's Pretend Tonsils...I should add that I missed, and set the nearby grass on fire

To be fair, this wasn't in an actual sermon. This was just for "Fun" (and by "Fun" I mean totally bizarre).  

The leader of my middle school class recently had his tonsils removed, and he decided to have a memorial service for his tonsils in the middle school class.  From there, the idea kept escalating to new levels of weirdness.  Eventually, he threw out the idea of having someone shoot a flaming arrow at the box containing the tonsils to set it on fire like they do in the movies (though we couldn't remember which movies).  

Well, I own a compound bow, so I was given the task of shooting the arrow.  Unfortunately, I'm not a good shot.  While I was only standing 5 ft. away, I missed and caught the grass on fire.  

Those of you who've been around me for awhile, am I missing any good/dumb illustrations?