Make a sermon come alive by telling a story from world missions history

Global Evangelism sermon illustration assignment instructions

"One of the things that impacted me most in this course was researching a missionary for the sermon illustration assignment." -- John Holz, youth minister

Simplified grading rubric for this assignment. Use it as a checklist before submitting your story to Scribe.

The object is not to come up with a story around which a missions sermon would be constructed This is to come up with a story or analogy from missions history which could be used in a sermon on another topic.

  1. Was the assignment submitted on time?
  2. Does the submission meet the minimum length requirement?
  3. Is it a story from the past history of global evangelism as opposed to being something from the Bible or else a relatively current happening?
  4. Is there enough detail for the story to "stick" in people's memories even after only one hearing of it?
  5. Is the story told with little or no "here's the point" material?
  6. Is the story told mostly in the student's own words with all direct quotes from other sources in quotation marks and the source identified?
  7. Are three subjects or topics listed for sermons in which this story or illustration could be used?
  8. Most stories will need to be fleshed out with a little more detail than is given in the textbook or lecture. Is there a listing of all sources consulted?
  9. Is the submission relatively free of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word usage mistakes?
  10. In terms of achieving assignment goals, is this work exceptional, excellent, good, acceptable, minimal, or inadequate?

Note: The course web pages on the official Nazarene Bible College site will contain expanded written instructions for this sermon illustration assignment.

    -- Howard Culbertson,

Searchable PDF of textbook

Afterword

A good sermon illustration is one that captures the attention of the congregation and vividly communicates the message of the sermon. Here's a description of what makes a good sermon illustration:

cartoon drawing of talkative person What kind of online student are you? Do others think of you as Busy or Wordy or Disconnected Dan? Do you sometimes come off to others as Oblivious or Trite-ly or even End-times Edith? . . [ more ]

Assignment instruction videos for this course

More for you on being successful in this class

Written lectures for this class

    -- Howard Culbertson,

"This is a great coarse that opened my eyes to the struggles Christians face around the globe. It gave me an understanding of the real need for missionaries around the world. It's still hard to fathom that there are over two billion people who have not heard about Jesus.+ -- student on course evaluation

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