Natural Analogies Assignment

HOMI 500 Natural Analogies Template Text: Philippians: Philippians 1:12-18  Make sure sermon ideas are clear and well worded  Plant to balance support for your sermon ideas.  Explore the common arenas of human experience.  Go beyond your own limited personal experience.  Distinguish between analogies and examples.  Present analogies in a vivid and imaginative way. This assignment involves the devising of illustrations for supporting sermon ideas through a process of exploring natural analogies. Complete the exercise with the following steps: 1. Write the division statement you are to illustrate. You may use the sermon idea for exploring analogies for the introduction and conclusion. Facing persecutions bring confidence and boldness from the Lord (v14). 2. Circle the word or two in your statement that can be used to identify the generic idea in nontheological terms. Boldness, Persecutions 3. Brainstorm the arenas of life listed below for analogies that are natural expressions of your theological idea. Write as many as you can. Do not evaluate them now or second-guess your ideas. o Family- Spouse & Children & Grandchildren o Business- loss of employment, jobs, ethical choices, choices o Animals- proper care, cruelty in care o Athletics- winning, losing and teams o Common objects- o World Affairs- wars, economic, terrorism o Other o Nature- growth, droughts, floods, natural disasters o Children- setting good example, making the right decisions, teaching them morals o Education-learning, failing, good/bad grades, passing, graduating o History-learning from the past, past of attitudes, seeing how others view the same situation. o Travel- vacations, spreading the gospel and destinations of foreign o Friendships-loss of friends, loving, helping others o Other 4. Check the best analogies from the list above on the basis of your subject, your audience, and your own ability to make particular ones work in the sermon. Accomplishment, context of a good example, perfecting of Ethics. 5. Plan here how you will particularize the analogies you have chosen. You will want to present them in concrete, specific, imaginative language. I will use an analogy having courage to call out misbehavior even though you know that you will be afflicted for doing so. When you recognize that something is scrupulously wrong or unethical, do you have the determination to upraise for what is correct? 6. Write out one of your analogies on the back of the sheet as you might present it in your sermon. You newly begin another job and only been hired for a short period. Even though you love your new job, you begin to see some divergence in your employer’s archives. The more you look at the records, the more you begin to comprehend that the employer has been doing some improper stuff. When you ask other employees about the situation, you are learned that you need to avoid because this is the way it is completed. You are also learned that if you do not stop following the concern, the company will likely let you go and defame you, by destroying your 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching / Wayne McDill / 2006 / B&H Used by Permission The purpose of this exercise is to develop skill at devising specific natural analogies for illustrating sermon ideas.