A single domino. A baseball home plate. Simple objects that carried eternal weight.

These weren’t props in a children’s church lesson – they were tools displayed by seasoned ministry leaders speaking to pastors, missionaries, and church staff at our recent Baptist Church Ministry Network conference in Springfield, Missouri. And honestly? They were among the most memorable moments of the entire event.

I walked away from that conference with more than great memories, renewed connections, and sermon notes. I left with a domino in my pocket and a nagging question: have we abandoned one of the most powerful teaching tools God Himself modeled for us.

When a Domino Becomes a Sermon

 Bob Butler’s presentation stopped me in my tracks. He showed us a video of dominoes—each one toppling the next, but here’s the catch: each domino was fifty percent larger than the one before it. The first? No bigger than a fingernail. The last? Over one hundred pounds crashing to the ground.

His point landed with that final domino: the Gospel works exactly this way. One person plants. Another waters. Someone else harvests when a soul places faith in Christ for salvation. We’re not responsible for the entire chain—just our domino. Our testimony. Our Scripture shared. Even a Gospel tract pressed into someone’s hand.

Before we left that session, Bob distributed dominoes to everyone who desired to recommit to seizing every opportunity for Christ. Mine sits in my pocket as I write this, a tangible reminder that I’m called to set the Gospel into motion today, with the people I’ll encounter before sunset.

That’s the power of an object lesson. It doesn’t end when the message does.

The Unchanging Standard

 Glenn Clary from Liberty University held up a baseball home plate – regulation size, seventeen inches across. He made a simple observation that carried profound weight: this plate’s dimensions are identical from little league through the Major Leagues. It’s an unchanged standard, reliable and accurate across every level of play.

Then he connected it to truth itself. In our contemporary society that insists truth is relative – shifting with individuals, contexts, and cultural moments – God’s Word remains that home plate. Unchanged. Trustworthy. The standard by which everything else is measured.

Glenn drew on the face of that plate, sketching windows and doors to represent a home, then a school with an American flag, then a government building, and finally a church signified by a cross. His question hung in the air: what happens if we let the standard change in each of these settings?

 We all knew the answer. We’ve watched it happen in real time.

But I’m still thinking about that home plate days later. That’s what object lessons do – they create mental hooks that sermons alone sometimes miss.

The Biblical Precedent We’ve Forgotten

 My years as a youth pastor taught me to love object lessons. School chapels, children’s lessons, teen youth group messages – there was something magnetic about capturing the eyes of listeners that seemed to draw them into the lesson. When multiple senses engaged, the message stuck differently. It preserved itself for later recall.

Even as a pastor working primarily with adults, I never abandoned well-timed, well-thought-out, well-executed object lessons.

Why would I? I was following the Master Teacher Himself.

God didn’t just tell the prophet Joel about coming judgment – He sent literal swarms of locusts. Jeremiah didn’t merely preach about Judah’s bondage to Babylon; he wore an actual yoke around his neck, day after day. He smashed clay vessels. He displayed two baskets of figs. Ezekiel built a model of Jerusalem and staged attacks against it. He cut off his own hair and beard, dividing it into portions he burned, struck with a sword, and scattered to the wind. He even baked bread over smoldering dung to dramatize the coming siege.

These weren’t gimmicks. This wasn’t silliness like what sometimes happens in pulpits across America. They were prophetic communication that engaged every sense and refused to be ignored or forgotten.

And Jesus? The list of His object lessons reads like an inventory of everyday life: water that satisfies eternally, bread that gives life, a widow’s offering that outweighed the wealth of the rich, a child called forward to teach humility, sheep and shepherds, birds of the air, flowers of the field, even a coin produced from a fish’s mouth to pay the temple tax.

Jesus used what was at hand. What people could see, touch, and remember.

If object lessons were good enough for the prophets and essential for Jesus, why should they be relegated to children’s ministry?

Redeeming the Everyday for Eternal Purposes

Here’s one thing I took home with me from Springfield, and what I hope you’ll consider: we need to be ready to share at a moment’s notice. Our everyday conversations should become spiritual introductions and open doors. The objects we encounter daily – our coffee cup, our car keys, our smartphone, the tools of our trade – all of these can become useful for sharing our faith in Christ with others.

This requires something of us, though. It demands that our minds be set on spiritual things, on “things above,” so thoroughly that our thoughts turn toward God and His work in our lives without much prompting. When we’re constantly aware of His presence and in tune with His will and work, we begin to see opportunities and illustration to share our faith with those in need.

Paul told the Colossians to set their minds on things above, not on earthly things. Perhaps part of that mindset means training ourselves to see the eternal significance in the temporal objects surrounding us every single day.

The Domino in Your Pocket

 I’m still carrying that domino Bob Butler handed out. It’s a small thing – barely weighs anything at all. But it represents something massive: my part in God’s unstoppable chain reaction of redemption.

What’s your domino? What object lesson is God placing in your hands today – not for a children’s lesson, but for the real-world conversation you’ll have this afternoon? For the counseling session with a struggling believer? For the staff meeting where morale is low?

The prophets used what God gave them. Jesus used what was at hand. The most effective ministry leaders I know are still doing the same.

Maybe it’s time we stopped underestimating the power of showing truth even as we’re speaking it.

Your move. Set your domino in motion.