Jump directly to the Content
Jump directly to the Content

Sermon Illustrations

Home > Sermon Illustrations

William Carey's Dream

Some people thought he was a nut. He was just a shoemaker, after all, and an average one at that. But in the evenings, after work, he studied Greek, Hebrew, and a variety of modern languages. He devoured Captain Cook's Voyages to expand his horizons, which, because of his poverty, kept him bound to a small, forgotten English village. Some people said his time would have been better spent getting a second job to support his growing family.

But the young man's passion wasn't a curious, self-satisfying hobby. Early in life he had become concerned about the millions of unbelievers outside of Europe, and he was trying to figure out what could be done to bring them the gospel.

With God's help, he slowly figured it out. He ended up going to India to serve as the first Protestant missionary in the modern era. His passion inspired a generation of men and women—the likes of Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, and David Livingstone (among others)—to take up the cause of missions as well.

Because one impoverished shoemaker named William Carey followed his God-given passion, large parts of the world that had little or no access to the gospel have large populations of people today who confess Christ as Lord.

Related Sermon Illustrations

Reaching Out to Witches, Warlocks, Satanists, and Vampires

In his book Organic Church, Neil Cole describes a number of missional communities that go where the people are, rather than have the people come to them. Such church communities meet ...

[Read More]

A Boot Camp for Young Missionaries

At Teen Missions, campers give up virtually their entire summer for [a boot camp] on evangelism. They spend two weeks in Merritt Island, Florida, learning the work of a missionary ...

[Read More]