Daily inspirational email with quotes by "Arnold, Blumhardt, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Romero, Sundar Singh, Tolstoy, and others."  Sponsored by Bruderhof faith communities, an Anabaptist organization.  [added Sept 17, 2004]

No index, just a keyword search engine.  Many of the illustrations are quite good.  Put Scripture searches inside quotation marks and you will get better results.  The first illustration's title appears in a field, and others are revealed when you click the arrow at the end.  A free email is offered.   [new Sept 8, 2011, updated January 6, 2013]

This e-Groups site has a database of 350+ illustrations which are searchable. Most are compiled by Rev. Tim Davis but other submissions are encouraged. You can be part of the e-Group and get illustrations by email by subscribing for free at illustrations-subscribe@egroups.com . I see the potential for more stars if more contributors participate, but nothing has been added since 2002. Note that the search engine sees "Psalm 15" as "Psalm" and "15" so Bible references are difficult to search.

Archive site for Discipleship Journal. This magazine is one of my favorites for sermon preparation. It is searchable and there is a cumulative index in PDF format. About four years are online. They do request an e-mail address but don't seem to put you on a junkmail list.

Don Elbourne Jr. is a computer-whiz who has constructed a massive illustration site which could get substantially larger. Best of all, it is free. You can click on the alphabet bar or use the Search menu for Topic, Title or Text and it is very speedy. He has future plans to add to the site but it has been static for quite a while. This is understandable since his church was obliterated by Hurricane Katrina. [updated September 7, 2011, removed January 3, 2013]

"Sermon illustrations from yesterday & today."  Site has 3,000+ illustrations with an excellent search engine.  A condensed summary of topics is listed on the front page.  Searches are very fast and illustrations have more source information than most sites give.  Sitemaster Zeke Moore is a web database programmer and a former Southern Baptist preacher; his biography can be found at http://www.linkedin.com/in/zekemoore. [Listed December 27, 2008]

This is an on-line fundamentalist Christian magazine from Australia. There is no index or search engine but I have found some outstanding illustrations in the back issues. Most of the articles are illustration-length and many are current. Some are rather extreme for my taste but the whole site is definitely worth checking out.

Now taken over by Dr. Rubel Shelly.  It has a weekly devotional and a search engine to ferret out topics. Many contain good sermon starters.  [updated September 1, 2008]

This site contains 40,000 illustrations (many of them from my database) that can be accessed from a search page.  The search page is somewhat confusing -- you enter your search phrase at the bottom in #6 -- but you can use Boolean logic to search for very specific material.  A summary of the search results is given in a small box at the top of the results page.  You can also use an extensive alphabetical index of keywords.  One drawback is that you cannot search by Scripture reference and the Boolean searches seem to be limited to keywords rather than the content of the illustration itself.  The site contains a ton of other material as well.  This is my first 5-star rating.  [added February 8, 2013]

Archive of over one hundred devotionals and some smaller collections of illustrations and poems. Webmaster is Dwayne Savaya . He has a "Prayer and E-mail Encouragement Ministry" that sends out material two or three times a week; you can sign up for it at Dwayne@godswork.org. [listed July 4, 2001]

"Sermon Illustrations, helps and devotionals." Mostly links to popular Christian magazines and radio sites.

[this site is no longer functioning but seems to have been taken over by Yahoo Illustration Exchange. [updated July 2003]

Site has long list of topics, many with multiple illustrations. Author claims: "I have tried consciously to exclude the following: trite or clichéd stories; so-called 'preacher stories' which have circulated widely for years; and stories which have been published in other illustration compilations (public domain or otherwise)"  Topics are organized with the Nave's Topical Bible system. This site is an offshoot of The Sermon Place. Author says more illustrations will be added regularly.

Search quotes on inspirational/positive-thinking topics by mostly secular sources.  You can search by keywords or a drop-down category list.  [added September 21, 2012]

Kir Shalom sermon illustration link page. Lots of other stuff here, too.

The granddaddy of online illustrations but now a pay site. Those visiting the site can check out a single free illustration each week; most of the other illustration features require a subscription to the site.  [updated Jan 26, 2017]

Lifeway, the Southern Baptist publishing house, used to have an illustration collection on its website with about 100 illustrations but I can no longer find them.  Instead there is a search engine that brings up a lot of good stuff, especially sermons.  (updated September 1, 2008]

Moody Magazine stopped publishing in 2003 but for a while they had an extensive archive at their site with an excellent search engine.  At some point they took it down. [listed April 30, 2005; De-listed Sept 8, 2011]

Secular site with a searchable database of 3,500+ motivation-oriented quotes. Also has special pages with personality profiles and more. Lots of pop-up ads, too. [listed Jan. 7, 2002]

NewsDirectory is a link site for dozens of religious magazines. The Protestant section is just one of many.

An excellent site from Australia.  Over 1,000 free illustrations and they are "of the highest quality" and "well indexed" as advertised.  A very good search engine and the illustrations are fresh.  Baptist pastor Scott Higgins runs the site.  [listed Oct 25, 2003]

This site is maintained by Fredericksburg Church of Christ and includes lots of supplement illustrations for the Parson's program. My database has incorporated about 4,500 of them. There are more to come - I think they have 10,000 available for download, with small zipped collections and huge zipped archives (none are "online"). A must for Parson's fans.

These illustrations range from good to archaic, but I think the Parson's system is too skimpy on topics and Scripture references. A lot of pastors use it, though.  The site has not added any archives in several years.

A collection of devotional material mostly arranged in a blog format.  Includes a search engine.  [updated Sept 8, 2011]

Pulpit Helps ceased publication in December 2009 and was taken over by Disciple Magazine.  There is a search engine for the archive of past issues but it requires a fee-based membership.  [updated Sept 8, 2011]

Around 80 illustrations from an index page that is arranged by title only.  Most of them are similar to a pastor's monthly newsletter article.  [listed July 22, 2003]

Campus Crusade for Christ, Canada, has a site with short articles which are more like sermons or meditations, most with illustrations.

A Christian blog from Danny Sutanto in Hong Kong/Australia.  He attaches topics (called "tags") to each entry so clicking on a topic will bring up related articles.  Most entries are short and devotional in nature.  The main blog page is here.  No new material has been added since 2008.  [listed March 2006, updated Sept 8, 2011]

An interesting site that has the appearance of an internet bulletin board. The theme is "Take some ideas, and leave some new ones for others!" The editor is Doug Showalter. Many of the posts are excellent short stories or pithy applications. Contributions are encouraged. You will not "find" stuff here, but it is quite possible you will be "sparked." [listed Nov. 23, 1999; De-listed Nov. 21, 2005]]

Potentially a dynamite site - pastors share individual illustrations which are added to a long list and a search engine helps you locate your topic.  Searches work best on narrow topics and could be frustrating on topics like "salvation."  The site seems to be mortibund.  By joining the list you get to contribute however anyone can view the material and use the search engine.  Seems to be a continuation of the Illustration Exchange website, which is defunct.   [updated September 1, 2008]

Tim Zingale's site has an All-Occasions Illustrations page and a Holiday page.  The illustration titles are in a frame at the top and the illustrations run one after the other in the bottom.  They do not seem to be in any particular order, and the only searching you can do is by title.  The page is difficult to navigate due to font sizes but there is a fair amount of material here.   [updated Sept 8, 2011]