Holwick's Links to the Best Free Sermon Illustrations
Updated September 8, 2011. Please report dead links or
new sites to
Pastor Holwick.
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Best online illustration sites |
Searchable Christian archive sites |
Free illustrations by e-mail |
Biblical Studies Foundation  |
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Sermons.logos
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Preaching Now | |
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Higher Praise
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SermonIllustrations.com
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Belief Net (Chicken Soup, etc.) |
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| This Is True | ||
| Illustration Exchange | ||
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Tim Gibson's online illustrations |
Fee-based sites with samples | |
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Secular archive sites |
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Christian
Bible & Research |
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SermonCentral illustrations | |
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Sermon
Illustrations Plus (Tan) |
Christian Magazines with indexes |
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Sermons.org
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Other Link sites |
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Sheep's
Crib
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Zingale's Illustrations
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| Free downloadable programs/files | ||
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Inspirational Stories and Poems
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If you know of other sites, or think any of my ratings or
comments are off the mark, let me know by clicking HERE. Comments
on Links Ron Newhouse's
daily internet devotions are sermon illustration-style. Go to the home page
and on the left side menu click "Past" for previous devotions. There is
no search feature or overall index. Two groups of Baptists in
the South offer newsletters by email. The Associated Baptist Press is run by the moderate
(break-away?) Southern Baptists (CBF) and sends out an email about once a week
which usually focuses on politically-oriented issues.
http://www.abpnews.com. What used to be "Daily In
Box" has been taken over by BeliefNet. If you like getting short
emails with illustration potential, you will like this page. It includes Bits&Pieces, Quotes From the Masters, Messages
From the Masters, and Chicken Soup for the
Soul. Some are heavy in the
motivate-for-success mindset but I have found good material on a regular
basis. Warning: go on vacation and you'll need
a shovel to get through this pile.
[updated May 13,
2006] Excellent site - hundreds
of illustrations categorized alphabetically with each topic having several
illustrations. Even better, many illustrations are categorized by Old
Testament and New Testament verses. This is especially helpful for pastors
who preach exegetical sermons and should be copied by other sites. You can
also search for keywords and see the results in context. I believe this site
is sponsored by Dallas Theological Seminary. Online illustrations are
presented after you choose from a list of 65+ topics. Most topics have three
to five illustrations and they seem to be pretty fresh. It also has an
"Illustration of the Week." Site has a very clean appearance and is
run by Keith Smith; it is part of the Classic Christian quotes
compiled by Robert McAnally Adams. The opening
screen offers today's quote and an archive page. He now has indexes and a
keyword search of the archive that is extremely helpful. You can have quotations
sent to you for free by signing up. If you like daily devotionals he
has links to other quality sites.
Chuck Colson's pithy
"Breakpoint" commentaries are archived at this site - look on the
sidebar under "BreakPoint Commentaries." Excellent for current social issues
from a Christian perspective. You can also have Breakpoint emailed to you. No index, just a keyword
search engine. Many of the illustrations are quite good. Put
Scripture searches inside quotation marks and you will get better results. A free
email is offered. This e-Groups site has a
database of 350+ illustrations which are searchable. Most are compiled by
Rev. Tim Davis but other submissions are encouraged. You can be part of the
e-Group and get illustrations by email by subscribing for free at illustrations-subscribe@egroups.com
. I see the potential for
more stars if more contributors participate, but nothing has been added since
2002. Note that the search
engine sees "Psalm 15" as "Psalm" and "15" so
Bible references are difficult to search. Not an illustration site
exactly but a forum for sermon ideas that sometimes contains illustrations.
You follow the discussion on specific texts. More resources are
available with a paid subscription.
[listed
Jan 20, 2004] Archive site for
Discipleship Journal. This magazine is one of my favorites for sermon
preparation. It is searchable and there is a cumulative index in PDF format.
About four years are online. They do request an e-mail address but don't seem
to put you on a junkmail list.
[as of
September 7, 2011, site is down due to web-service problems] Don Elbourne
Jr. is a computer-whiz who has constructed a massive illustration site which
could get substantially larger. Best of all, it is free. You can click on the
alphabet bar or use the Search menu for Topic, Title or Text and it is very
speedy. He has future plans to add to the site but it has been static for
quite a
while. This is understandable since his church was obliterated by Hurricane
Katrina. This is an on-line
fundamentalist Christian magazine from Now taken over by Dr.
Rubel Shelly. It has a weekly devotional and a search engine to ferret
out topics. Many contain good
sermon starters.
[updated September 1,
2008]
This is a
downloadable archive in the form of a Windows help file. It used to be free
but now costs $5 to unlock for full usage. It is well done
and includes around 350 illustrations and 300 quotes which are accessed from
a list of topics.
(Listed Nov. 20, 1999,
updated September 8, 2011)
Searchable online
illustration database, plus a topics page. The white box on the left-hand side
allows you to type in search words, or you can click "Main Menu" to browse
through a list of topics. Each topic has several illustrations and many
have links to related topics. It appears
that many of the illustrations in his archive program have been adapted to
the internet. Site was give a major revamping in early 2005.
(Listed Jan. 7,
2002, updated Jan 17, 2005) Archive of thousands of quotes
on spiritual topics by noted Christians. Pastor Randy Smith has
arranged them by detailed topics, with each topic bringing up numerous quotes. He
also offers to email you a quote every day.
[listed September 8, 2008]
Archive of two-minute
devotionals by Phil Ware. Good for sermon ideas. It also has a search engine.
This is my own site. The
only online illustrations are contained in the online sermons. My main offer is a free,
and massive, sermon and illustration database. The Kerux database comes
in several versions (all have the same sermon and illustration material).
The most popular is known as
S.I.D. for Sermon and Illustration Database;
it comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. A different format with
many new features is called
Kerux2010.
All versions allow you to enter your own material and download supplements
from others. You can search by Bible verse, topic or even phrases.
Everything at my site is free
as long as it is used for God's Glory.
Searchable index of
devotionals by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson. Site is by a Christian
author who has arranged illustrations and quotes from his material under 150+
topics with 1 to 5 entries per topic. He continually updates it.
Kir Shalom sermon illustration link
page. Lots of other stuff here, too. The granddaddy of online
illustrations but now a pay site. Those visiting the site can check out a
single free illustration each week; most of the other illustration features
appear to require a subscription to the site. Mission Frontiers
magazine has excellent articles on the modern mission movement. Many of the
articles are inspirational, as are the illustrations from the lives of
missionaries. It is free, and better yet it has a fantastic search engine
that shows your search word(s) in the context of the article. An excellent
resource. Daily Bread-type
devotions which focus on a Bible passage and often lead off with an
illustration. The whole collection of devotions can be searched with a decent
search engine, so you can look up a particular Bible verse or topic. A
index-style website with around 20,000 illustrations.
One quirky feature is a collection of illustrations based on chemistry
experiments. Many of the illustrations are from older sources. They used to have a page
called Soul Food with a searchable archive of
short stories from the United Methodist Reporter (Interactive). They now have a weekly sermon help section based on the
lectionary. [updated
September 1, 2008] User-submitted submitted
poems (lots), quotes, and stories (mostly fiction). Much of the material is
in the genre of Chicken Soup of the Soul. Organized by category and date
submitted. Secular site with a
searchable database of 3,500+ motivation-oriented quotes. Also has special pages with personality profiles and more. Lots
of pop-up ads, too. Skeptic Chuck Shepherd
has an interesting site with very strange real-life stories of stupid
criminals, ignorant politicians and lots of other folks you will recognize.
You can use his search engine to look up stories matching keywords, such as
the state you live in. [updated
Sept 8, 2011] A collection of devotional
material mostly arranged in a blog format. Includes a search engine. [updated
Sept 8, 2011] This site is maintained
by Fredericksburg Church of Christ and includes lots of supplement
illustrations for the Parson's program. My database has incorporated about
4,500 of them. There are more to come - I think they have 10,000 available for download, with small
zipped collections and huge zipped archives (none are "online"). A
must for Parson's fans. These illustrations range
from good to archaic, but I think the Parson's system is too skimpy on topics
and Scripture references. A lot of pastors use it, though. The site has
not added any archives in several years. Fee-based, but one free
illustration each month is online. Fee-based Preaching
magazine site
offers free weekly email with high-quality illustrations. It now offers
a search engine for online illustrations and many are current. Fee-based site offers one
free illustration each week by email. A searchable illustration database, a
journal, and others articles are available by paid subscription. Pulpit Helps ceased
publication in December 2009 and was taken over by Disciple Magazine.
There is a search engine for the archive of past issues but it requires a
fee-based membership. Laugh Bank of Reader's
Digest with 4000 funny stories. [Link takes you to their main page because
the Laugh Bank moves around.] Archive of Ron Hutchcraft's radio messages but there does not seem to be
a search engine. Devotional length and each
has his energetic style. One site notes that these make great sermon
starters.
[updated Sept 8, 2011] The sermons are still free
but the illustrations have been moved to the fee-based "Pro" section.
[listed
Free weekly email with 5
sermons and illustrations on a theme. After you click this link you have
to wait a few seconds before a pop-up window appears - enter your email
address and you'll get the newsletter.
[updated Jan 26, 2010] Weekly newsletters are
archived with each
one containing a "...collection of quips,
quotes, humor, paradox, etc., on the issues most used by ministers for
preaching." Put together by Lyndale Press.
More quote- and thought-oriented than classic illustration.
[updated Jan 26, 2010] Methodist pastor Brett Blair offers
a free weekly e-mail of sermon illustrations and his site contains online illustrations accessed from an alphabetical page.
There seem to be hundreds and they tend to be current. There is no
search engine. More complete resources are available with fee-based
membership to eSermons.com. Tan's famous "15,000
Illustrations" book is in a (very) condensed version at this site. Each
of the 38 topics has four or five illustrations but the topics only go from A to G . 6,300
illustrations accessed with a search engine. Illustrations are fairly standard but some are quite
good. Promoted on Good source of online
sermons and illustrations. The main page is a list of topics but only the
ones in blue (a decided minority except for "A") link to illustrations. Links are also given
for Parson's Biblical Illustrator and supplements, the Illustration Exchange,
Sermon Illustrations.com and Leadership; each of which is commented on
separately in my links. When you go to the links from here, the original
program continues to frame it. There is also an extensive sermon index which
highlights Baptist Bible Fellowship preaching. Site maintained by Pastor
Shelton Cole. A service of
Logos Bible Software.
Type in a keyword or Bible reference and lots of material pops up. Tens of thousands of
sermons and illustrations and a forum for users as well.
(added May 20, 2010 14 free back issues of a
paid illustration service. Richard Donovan specializes in "True
Stories" which tie in with a lectionary reading. For each reading he
suggests a sermon title, sermon idea, and an appropriate true story, which is
usually contemporary. I was impressed by several of them. Pastor (and blogger) John
Gillmartin's illustration page with a blog format. About 100 topics are on the
right-hand side,
often with multiple illustrations. You can type in search words as well.
No new material seems to have been added since 2008.
[listed
April 7, 2005, updated Sept 8, 2011]
Weekly email by
Formerly called Christian Reader
magazine. Good for personal testimonies of well-known evangelical
personalities and has some helpful articles. The site is now Christianity.com.
Search engine for keywords and of course a free daily email is offered. [updated Sept 8, 2011] Due to Richard Wimer's
health, this site ceased to add new material in 2007 but you can search the
archives. Each entry has
short illustrations, quotes and trivia.
[updated Sept 8, 2011]
The Baptist Press is run by the regular Southern Baptists. In my opinion this
one has the best testimonies and
sermon ideas and their email goes out every weekday. For the free
subscription, go
here.
For other
Christian daily emails, sign up for as many as you want at
Crosswalk.com.
This site is a combination forum and archive.
Membership is either by monthly fee or by submitting a monthly illustration. Members can search the archive by topic or text.
Currently the selection seems to be limited. Dr. Mitchell Dillon and his
son Seth run the site.
An archive of stories,
poems, and thoughts. I found it difficult to distinguish true stories
from fiction - I suspect most of it is fiction. True stories are my
preference but this may be up your alley.
The signup for the weekly illustration email is at the upper left corner of
the page. [updated Sept 8, 2011]
Zingale's Illustrations
Tim Zingale's site has an All-Occasions
Illustrations page and a Holiday page. The illustration titles are in a
frame at the top and the illustrations run one after the other in the bottom.
They do not seem to be in any particular order, and the only searching you can
do is by title. The page is difficult to navigate due to font sizes but
there is a fair amount of material here.
[updated Sept 8, 2011]
Discontinued Illustration Sites
(now on a page of their own)