Ep 14: Illustration Blindspots - The People in Our Congregations We Are Ignoring

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Half of churchgoers say their pastor doesn't understand their family situation. That's not a theology problem or a character problem — it's an illustration problem. And most pastors have no idea they have it.

In this episode, Jonathan McClintock unpacks one of the most common and least-discussed weaknesses in preaching: the illustration blindspot. Most preachers draw from the life they've lived — their marriage, their stage of life, their background, their references — and over time that quietly tells large portions of the room that the sermon wasn't built with them in mind.

Using Paul's sermon at the Areopagus in Acts 17 as the model, this episode makes the case for widening your well without watering down your message. Paul quoted secular Greek poets to build a bridge to people who didn't even know the true God — then walked them straight across that bridge to repentance and resurrection. That's the pattern: widen the entry point, don't water down the truth.

You'll learn:

• What an illustration blindspot is — and why it's invisible to the preacher
• The four categories where blindspots show up most often
• A simple audit of your last four sermons that reveals your patterns
• Three principles from Paul's example at Mars Hill
• One concrete thing to do in your sermon prep this week

If you've ever wondered whether your preaching is reaching everyone in the room — or just the people whose lives look like yours — this episode is for you.

The Clear Preaching Academy is open now. Learn more at ClearPreaching.com.

Transcript

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A 2026 ministry study by Barna found that only half, 50% of churchgoers, say their pastor understands their family situation. Think about that for a second. That means half the room feels like the person preaching doesn't get their life. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Clear Preaching Podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan McClintock, and today we're discussing the half of your church you're not preaching to, or illustration blind spots and really how to fix them. You see, this isn't a theology problem. It's not a sermon structure problem, really. This is on the illustration level of preaching. Now, most pastors and preachers are very theologically inclusive, want to include everybody and make the gospel fit everybody, and but we're illustratively narrow at the same time, and we have no idea that we're doing it. Really, the core tension here is that most preachers illustrate from the life they've lived, their marriage, their kids, their background, their references. But the unintended message is that over time that quietly tells large portions of the room that the sermon wasn't really built exactly with you in mind. So, what is an illustration blind spot exactly? Let's define the illustration blind spot because this isn't about what you believe, it's about what you assume. An illustration blind spot, it's not necessarily bias and it's not really carelessness either. It's a well problem, W-E-L-L. You see, you draw from what you know. I draw from what I know, and what we know is shaped by our own lives. The danger is, the challenge is, is it's invisible to the preacher. Can't see the blind spot precisely because it's a blind spot. The illustrations feel universal to us because they're universal in our experience. But it doesn't mean it's the way for everybody. Here's the cost. People will not come up and tell you that if they felt unseen. They don't come up to you afterwards and say, man, that illustration didn't include me. They just slowly engage, or slowly disengage. So here's four categories. We could list more, but four categories where blind spots show up most often. The first one, and what the study was really about, is family structure. See, in your congregation, you've got married people and single and divorced, blended, and widowed, those never married. This is the most common blind spot, at least that's what the 2026 data in Barna's survey named it directly. But then you've also got the life stage blind spot. You've got young adults, you've got parents of young kids, you've got empty nesters, the elderly. And a sermon illustrated entirely from only one of those stages leaves all the others watching from the outside. Another area is the economic reality. If financial stability is an assumption, it's not universal. And illustrations that assume disposable income or homeownership quietly exclude people under the most pressure. And really, the fourth area here is cultural reference, the generational, regional, educational, the movie reference, the sports analogy, the book everyone has obviously read. Each of these includes some but excludes a whole host of others. Here's one way to find out whether this is happening in your preaching. This is a diagnostic tool, simple to do, but help you see what you're doing. So go pull out your last four sermons. Not your best four, not your favorites, but just the last four you actually preached. Look at every illustration you used. Don't necessarily go through and evaluate them just yet. Just locate them and then and then ask one question of each illustration. Whose life does this illustration assume? Whose experience does it draw from? And then look for the pattern because most pastors and preachers discover they've been drawing from the same two or three categories over and over and over. And that's an important discovery in this episode here today. I remember a preacher who was part of the church I grew up in, and every time they preached, they used the same the same three types of illustrations. One, he used an illustration about his marriage. Secondly, he would always use an illustration about his home. And thirdly, about his son. It not only became laughable, it became predictable because it failed to include so many people. In fact, the same segments of the church are being connected with each time. Those who are married, those who owned homes, those who had kids. What about everybody else? But here's the good news. This is one of the most fixable problems in preaching, really. It's just being aware of it. And the model for how to fix it, we can find it right in the book of Acts. There and how Paul preached in Athens. Look in Acts 17. Here, Paul is the model of widening the well without losing the message. Set the stage. Paul's in Athens. His spirit's provoked by a city full of idols. He's about as far from his home context as a preacher can get. Different religion, different philosophy, different frame of reference entirely. But watch what he does. The scripture says this. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious, for I passed along and observed the objects of your worship. I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. Acts 17, 22 to 23. Paul didn't walk in among these people with his usual illustrations. He walked the city first. He observed. He noticed the altar. He noticed their worship. He noticed their actual lives. And he built his entry point for the gospel out of what he found right there among them. And then he does something remarkable for a Jewish rabbi, for a teacher. He first quotes their poets, not the scriptures, in order to make his connection. He says this, for in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. Acts 17, 28. So here we have Paul, the most theologically rigorous preacher in the entire New Testament. And what does he do? He reaches for secular Greek poetry to build a bridge to people who didn't know the true God. He met them in their well, not just his. Here's the part we can't miss. He doesn't stay there, though. He widens the well in order to build this bridge, and then he walks them straight across it to repentance and resurrection, really ultimately to Jesus. He didn't water down the message to reach them. He just widened the entry point so that they would hear the message, so that the message could land. Let's look at three principles drawn from Paul's example here. First of all, one bridge at a time. You don't need an illustration from every category of every person every week. Just like Paul, I used one altar, one poem. Just introduce one different category per sermon, one different type of person in your audience, one sermon, and that's enough to start breaking the pattern. Number two, we learn from Paul is that the text is bigger than your life. See, every passage we preach has been lived out in more context than our own. The text is broader than our experience of it. So if we can find one other context to preach from, from somebody in our church congregation, help us reach them a little better. The third thing we can learn from Paul's example here is walk the city first. Here, Paul observed Athens before he preached to it. He looked at them, he looked at where they were living. Here, your most powerful illustrations will not be found in books or podcasts or anything else. They will be found in the lives of the people sitting right in front of you. So we got to learn to see them. So what can you do this week? One thing to do this week. Pull your last sermon. Find the two or three illustrations you use. Ask that audit question: who does each one assume in this room? What do I assume about them? Then do one thing. Identify one person in the audience, the congregation, whose life experience you have not illustrated from in the last month. And build something to include them this week. That's really it. One person, one bridge. And like Paul, you start walking the city by actually seeing who is right there in front of us. Now, before I close, let me tell you about something that's been built and being built to help you with exactly this. I don't know if you've heard about the Clear Preaching Academy. You've heard me talk about it a little bit. Inside that, there is a tool that I offer called the Clarity Audit. And there inside the Academy, uh, we'll review, I'll review your illustrations. It's really a part of the feedback. It's one of the things that an outside set of eyes can catch that you can't catch yourself because, by definition, we can't see our own blind spots. So the academy is open now. And if today's episode names something you want to keep working on, that's what the academy is built for, week after week, not just once. Remember, Paul preached the same gospel he always preached. He just took the time to find that door that would open to the people in front of him. Your people, my people, are worth that work. All of them, not just the ones whose lives look like mine or look like yours. You don't have to do this alone. I'll see you next week.