I don’t want to lie, if I was a pastor I would have used the balloon boy incident in my sermon yesterday. (If you missed it, a few days ago folks were gripped for hours by watching a homemade weather balloon float 7,000 feet in the air because we all thought there was a 6-year old boy named Falcon accidentally inside. Turns out he was at home in the attic the whole time and never in danger.) Given the pressure of coming up with a new sermon weekend after weekend after weekend, I would have totally ridden that kid’s helium coattails to fantastical sermon illustration awesomeness.

And I don’t think I’m the only one who sees national news events as potential sermon fodder. From the sermon success of Michael Phelps during the Olympics to recent celebrity deaths, it’s tempting to create a sermon illustration that is “ripped from the headlines.” If your pastor does, I hope they will use one of the three following techniques …

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