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Home›Traditions›Anabaptist

Anabaptist Illustrations

Radical discipleship, pacifism, and the church as a distinct counter-cultural community.

Key question: “How does this text call the community of faith to live as a distinct, counter-cultural witness to the Kingdom?”

23,633 sermon illustrations through the Anabaptist lens

Sermon Illustration

The Ground Shook at Pad 39A

In November 2022, thousands gathered along the causeways near Cape Canaveral to watch the Artemis I rocket lift off from Launch Pad 39A. Maria Gutierrez,...

Psalm 29Universal

220 words

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Movie Analogy

The Richest Man in Town

In Frank Capra's classic *It's a Wonderful Life*, George Bailey stands on a bridge on Christmas Eve, convinced his life has been worthless. A failed...

Universalcommunity

257 words

Sermon Illustration

The Broken Composer Who Gave His Masterpiece Away

In the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel was a ruined man. A stroke had partially paralyzed him years earlier. Creditors circled. London audiences had...

Universalsacrifice

261 words

Sermon Illustration

The Last Flight of Roberto Clemente

On December 23, 1972, a massive earthquake devastated Managua, Nicaragua, killing thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates' legendary right...

Universalsacrifice

228 words

Vivid Retelling

The Weight Lifted: Psalm 32

Cinematic retelling of Psalm 32 on confession and forgiveness

Universal

540 words

Sermon Illustration

The Word Carved in the Ashes

When the Great Fire of London consumed Old St. Paul's Cathedral in September 1666, Christopher Wren walked through the smoldering ruins surveying the devastation. Amid...

Genesis 3:9-15, 20Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

One Millimeter at a Time

In the 1950s, a Soviet orthopedic surgeon named Gavriil Ilizarov made a remarkable discovery in Siberia: shattered bones could be regrown. His device — a...

Universalpatience

224 words

Sermon Illustration

Churchill's Covenant with a Broken Nation

On May 8, 1945, Winston Churchill stood on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in London and addressed a crowd of thousands packed into...

Genesis 9:8-17Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

Seventeen Years in the Dark

In the forests of eastern North America, periodical cicadas of the genus Magicicada are doing something almost unbelievable. Entomologist Gene Kritsky has spent decades studying...

Universalpatience

246 words

Historical

Grace Written from Exile

In 1845, Victor Hugo began writing a novel about a convict named Jean Valjean — a man imprisoned nineteen years for stealing a loaf of...

Romans 5:8Universalgraceredemption

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Jersey in the Stands

In 2019, before Zion Williamson played his first official NBA game for the New Orleans Pelicans, cameras caught something in the crowd at the Smoothie...

Mark 1:4-11Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Came Looking

On a cold November evening in 2019, thirteen-year-old Marcus slipped out of his grandmother's house in Memphis and didn't come back. He'd broken her antique...

Genesis 3:9-15, 20Universal

262 words

Sermon Illustration

The Password Reset

Most of us have been there — staring at a Gmail login screen, cycling through every password combination we can think of, growing more frustrated...

Universalgrace

231 words

Movie Analogy

One Last Night on a Bathroom Floor

In *The Pursuit of Happyness*, there is a scene that should break you. Chris Gardner — played by Will Smith — has lost his apartment,...

Universalpatience

244 words

Sermon Illustration

Twenty-One Years for a Single Symphony

Johannes Brahms was thirty years old when he first sketched the opening notes of his *Symphony No. 1*. He wouldn't finish it for another twenty-one...

Universalpatience

220 words

Historical

The Slave Trader Who Became a Hymn Writer

In 1764, John Newton was ordained as an Anglican curate and assigned to the small parish church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Olney,...

2 Corinthians 5:17Universalgraceredemption

273 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bishop Who Knew Which Throne Mattered

In 155 AD, the Roman proconsul in Smyrna gave the aged Bishop Polycarp one simple command: say "Caesar is Lord," sprinkle a pinch of incense...

Psalm 110:1-4Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Followed the Muddy Footprints

In 2019, seven-year-old Marcus Thompson of Decatur, Georgia, shattered his grandmother's antique vase while throwing a football in the living room. His father, DeShawn, came...

Genesis 3:9-15, 20Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Avalanche That Stripped the Mountain Bare

In February 2019, a backcountry guide named Erik Holsen was leading a group near Rogers Pass in British Columbia when they heard what he later...

Psalm 29Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Scholarship That Kept Arriving

In 2019, a first-generation college student named Marcus Rivera enrolled at the University of Houston with a full scholarship from a local foundation. What Marcus...

1 Corinthians 1:3-9Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Man Who Took His Place

In the closing pages of Charles Dickens' *A Tale of Two Cities*, the dissolute lawyer Sydney Carton walks through the streets of Paris on the...

Universalsacrifice

257 words

Movie Analogy

The Island (Ostrov): Theosis as Mission - Orthodox (Great Commission)

In the hauntingly beautiful film *Ostrov* (The Island), we are introduced to a monk named Anatoly, who lives in a remote monastery on a windswept island in Russia. His existence appears, at first glance, to be one of sheer foolishness....

Matthew 28:18-20Universal

359 words

Sermon Illustration

The Door She Almost Didn't Open

In 2018, Maria Gutierrez drove to her family's restaurant in Houston for the last time — or so she thought. Hurricane Harvey had buried the...

Mark 16:1-8Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Recommendation That Changed Everything

In 2019, a young chef named Marcus Samuelsson—already famous for Red Rooster in Harlem—told an interviewer about the moment that redirected his entire career. He...

John 1:29-42Universal

232 words