Stale Sermon Illustrations?

The annual Beloit College Mindset List helps professors see the world through the eyes of their incoming 18-year-old freshmen. The List features factoids such as “Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents” to sketch how dramatically different the world is for these youngsters. We have mined Beloit’s new Class of 2015 list, for advice on how to freshen your preaching. If you’re over 40, odds are this list can help you choose which pop culture references might need to join the VHS player in the dustbin.

Cheers. They don’t remember the theme, so scratch “where everybody knows your name” when describing church.
Godless communists. What communists? The Politburo was dead before they were born, and China has a market-driven economy.
Women. With two women always on the Supreme Court, skip stories about women’s lib, inequality, and the glass ceiling.
Family. Make your fond memories about the Food Network. Their Grandma lives four states away, and she specialized in the drive-thru. If today’s freshmen cook, they learned it from Emeril.
Sexuality. Gay was never an emotion—or as much of an issue—for today’s kids. Ellen came out when they were in preschool. As Beloit said, “We have never asked, they have never had to tell.”
Tech. “Don’t touch that dial!” What’s a dial? Also delete “beeper” and “floppy disc.” And nothing ages you faster than referencing your “home phone.”
Sports update. The only Montana they know is Hannah. Their legendary players are ?LeBron and Kobe. And Arnold Palmer is a drink.

Slow-motion Moral Collapse

“These riots were not about race. These riots were not about government cuts … And these riots were not about poverty. No, this was about behavior … people showing indifference to right and wrong; people with a twisted moral code; people with a complete absence of self-restraint.

“We have been too unwilling for too long to talk about what is right and what is wrong. We have too often avoided saying what needs to be said-about everything from marriage to welfare to common courtesy.

“What last week has shown is that this moral neutrality, this relativism – it’s not going to cut it anymore.”

—British Prime Minister David Cameron after riots and looting in major U.K. cities (ChristianPost.com, Aug 2011)

Sunday, Bloody Stun-day

At New Welcome Baptist Church in Alabama an irate minister of music “Tased” a pastor who had just fired him, and a deacon stabbed the musician’s mother.

The shocking incident occurred after Pastor Darryl Riley told worship leader Simone Moore that he was being let go. Moore disputed the amount of his final paycheck and blasted the pastor with a Taser gun.

Several church members rushed the dueling clergymen. In the melee that followed, Deacon Harvey Hunt pulled a knife and stabbed the musician’s mom. “I said, ‘Oh my God, he done cut me,” Agolia Moore told a local television station. Moore suffered a gash on her arm that required 19 stitches. She claimed church leaders ganged up on her son when he was fired. “They owed him,” Agolia said. “He asked them for his money. That was the big thing right there, wasn’t no more or no less.”

The music minister wanted an additional $600.

—Based on a report from NY Daily News, 8/12/11