What Does That Look Like? Using Movie Clips to Make Your Point

We all know that movies can be powerful. And we all know that movies are huge cultural influencers. Because of that, we can use clips and scenes from movies to help our audiences see or get a mental picture of what we're talking about in our messages.

This last week, our Pastor showed a clip from Ice Age, the animated film that featured Ray Romano as one of the last Mammoths on earth. He showed a scene from the movie where a squirrel chases an elusive acorn. The squirrel just keeps chasing the acorn and he can't ever quite seem to get it. On the surface, it's just a simple, silly clip. The congregation loved it, laughed at it, and was entertained by it. The fact that it was simple and funny made it easy to remember. This made the clip sticky (more about "sticky" here) and, when attached to the Pastor's message, made his point stick.

The message was the first in a series called Ka-Ching-Enomics. The series contrasts God's Economy with the world's economy. Here's how the pastor set up and came out of the clip:

Pastor:

We live in a world that lies to us about reality. And the foundation of worldwide ka-ching-enomic theory is this falsehood known as If Only. "If only I could be that, if only I could do this, if only I could obtain that, then I’d be happy. It would be enough. I’d be full. There’d be contentment in my life." Watch this clip:

This is where he played the clip and then this is how he came out of it:

Did you ever feel like that squirrel? There’s this acorn and it’s so good that you can smell it but you can’t quite grasp a hold of it. Well, our story begins today not with a prehistoric nut but with a prehistoric fruit.

Then he went on to read from Genesis and talk about how the evil one sets us up just like he set up Adam and Eve. "Hey, if you just do this, you'll be happy. If only..." And for the rest of the sermon he could refer to that acorn and we knew what he was talking about and we knew how we can sometimes be just like that squirrel chasing that nut. It was so simple. And it worked so well.

The sermon was preached by Ted Beasley at Gateway Church here in Austin. If you're interested in hearing how he set up and wove the metaphor of the clip into his entire sermon, you can listen to his sermon here.

Sermon Illustrations, like the ones you can find here at eleven72.com and clips from popular movies can be such a powerful addition to your sermon. The power comes from how you tie the clip to your message. Set up the clip. Show the clip. And then tell your people what it means. This will give them a visual picture to attach to your message and that visual picture will help make the message stick.

If you're looking to use a clip or scene from a popular film, here are some great resources to help you find what you're looking for:

CVLI.org - A license from Christian Video Licensing International, just like CCLI for music, gives you the right to show clips from thousands of movies, including movies from a lot of the big studios, in your services and Sunday school classes. With the license everything is on the up and up as far as copyright is concerned and all that. To learn more visit the CVLI website.

Textweek - Textweek has a Movie Concordance that has movies indexed by title as well as theme. Along with the title of each movie, you'll find a brief synopsis of how the movie or clip mentioned ties into a biblical theme. Textweek was my first stop when I was the Media Director at Gateway Church. While you're on the site, check out their other resources like their Scripture Index, their Art Index and their Resources For Use in Times of Terrorism and War. You can find it all here.

IMDB.com - The Internet Movie Database a great site for mining information on movies. Who made them. Who's in them(shameless plug- I'm even listed in there). For our purposes here, IMDB is great because there is a drop down menu that let's you search specifically for Quotes and Plots. So if you know that you're preaching about X or you need a clip where a character talks about Y, you simply select the appropriate search criteria from the drop down menu and then type whatever you need into the search field and up comes a list of movies with the plots or quotes you're looking for. It's awesome. Click here to go to IMDB now.

I know there are many more resources out there that I don't know about. If you know about any, we'd love to share them with everyone. Email me at storme@eleven72.com or leave a comment on the blog. What are your favorite movie illustrations? Where do you find them? What do you think? Let us know!