60-Second Sermon

Send us Fan Mail Roy Sullivan was a U.S. park ranger at the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. In 1942, Sullivan was seeking shelter during a thunderstorm when a lightning bolt struck him, running down his leg and burning a hole in his shoe. Sullivan survived the ordeal and was driving down the road 27 years later when lightning bounced off a tree and shot through the open window of his truck,...

Send us Fan Mail In 1968, Dr. Spencer Silver, a scientist at 3M, was trying to develop an ultra-strong adhesive. Instead, he accidentally ended up creating a weak, re-positionable adhesive, but he couldn’t figure out what to do with it.  Five years later, a colleague asked to use the adhesive on the back of a bookmark for his hymnal. The idea took off, and a new product was created and rolled out...

Send us Fan Mail You couldn’t turn on the television without hearing a news report about the health scare. The world was in an uproar, government officials were trying to figure out how best to handle it, and parents were taking special precautions with their children. Billion-dollar industries were brought to their knees and suffered its effect for years. What was this entity that plagued the wor...

Send us Fan Mail Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a 29-year-old engineer in Japan. On August 6, 1945, he was preparing to head back home after a three-month business trip in Hiroshima. On the way to the station, however, he realized he forgot an item at his workplace and went back to retrieve it. Upon returning to the station, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb only 3 km away from Yamaguchi...

Send us Fan Mail Bryan Berg is an architect known for creating record-setting structures that leave onlookers in awe. After graduating with degrees from Iowa State and Harvard, he began touring the world and designing his structures for corporations around the globe. Berg isn’t only known for building, however; he’s also known for his destruction. As soon as he completes his buildings, he immediat...

Send us Fan Mail Walter dreamed of making it big, but it seemed like it wasn’t meant to be. On the heels of a failed business venture, he moved to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming an actor. This attempt failed as well, and he was left with nothing but beans to eat as his debts escalated. Walter began to seek funding for his latest concept, but was rejected by over 300 financiers. He didn’t giv...

Send us Fan Mail In the 1800s, two brothers, John and Will, were carrying out research on nutrition and the impact certain foods can have on a body. While making dough, one of the brothers forgot about his batch when leaving it out to dry. Much later, when the brothers tried to roll out the forgotten dough, it splintered into dozens of individual pieces. Not ones to let anything go to waste, the b...

Send us Fan Mail Naval engineer Richard James was stationed at a Pennsylvania shipyard in the 1940s and faced the same struggle as many other sea-faring officers … how to stabilize sensitive instruments aboard ships in rough seas. James developed springs that would hold the instruments in place, but discovered another use for them when he knocked one of the springs from the shelf and watched as it...

Send us Fan Mail Edward St. John, the CEO of St. John Properties, challenged his employees to meet a portfolio goal over a 40-year period. The company was able to meet the goal this year, only 14 years after setting it, and St. John decided to thank his employees. At the company’s annual Christmas party, St. John decided to give his employees a special bonus … $10 million to divide among them.  In...

Send us Fan Mail When Jimmy was six years old, he experienced a traumatic move that caused him to stutter, which led to him becoming a selective mute. Over the next eight years, he would not speak to anyone outside his house … not clerks at stores, not teachers at school, not even students in class. That all changed one day when he was 14 and was challenged by a teacher with whom he had developed...

Send us Fan Mail Over 200 years ago, Mount Tambora, a volcano on an island in Indonesia, erupted and literally changed the world. The explosion was heard 1,600 miles away and the ash was so massive that it caused the temperature across the world to drop two degrees and lead to a year without summer.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but 1816 is the coldest year on record since the 1400s and the effect...

Send us Fan Mail Many songs are easily identified by their chorus or their intro, or the first few lines of lyrics. Games and apps have been built around the process of identifying music. Arthur Lintgen, a self-proclaimed music buff and audiophile, takes this concept to the next level.  What makes Lintgen’s identification technique stand out is that he doesn’t have to listen to three or four notes...

Send us Fan Mail In the 1930s, William Van Alen began designing what he thought would be the tallest building in the world, measuring in at 925 feet tall. Around the same time, however, another architect began working on a building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan that would stand at 927 feet, making it the tallest skyscraper. Van Alen publicly conceded defeat, and he and his employer went off to li...

Send us Fan Mail In 1972, an inventor and a scientist developed a concept they thought would revolutionize the healthcare industry. They created a substance to spray on a broken arm or leg that would create an instant cast, but they couldn’t find any takers. Instead of giving up, they decided to focus their attention on pushing their product toward another industry, where it became a huge success...

Send us Fan Mail A beautiful island sits off the coast of Brazil, but the Brazilian government has ruled it off limits to visitors. Its residents, which number approximately one for every square meter of space on the island, would surely invite you to stop by if they could. Unfortunately for them, they don’t have that capability, so the 110-acre island remains uninhabited by humans, but is home to...

Send us Fan Mail Like many countries, Sweden was looking for the best energy source to power their region. They settled on a process called “district heating,” a process that heats water running throughout pipes in buildings and homes, providing heat for its occupants.  In order to generate the heat, they had to have resources to burn, so they began importing fuel from other countries. But what’s...

Send us Fan Mail The young waitress and poet had dreams of becoming an actress, which wouldn’t have been a surprise to those who knew her, since everyone considered her to be exceptionally pretty.  Somewhere along the way she became disenchanted, however,  and her dreams of tinseltown faded away. One of her poems, entitled “The Street Girl,” was autobiographical in nature, and told of a girl who l...

Send us Fan Mail Brandt encouraged Amber to give her life to Christ, telling her that he loved her and wanted her to turn to God for forgiveness and salvation. He approached Amber and gave her a long, emotional hug, during which they both shared in a private conversation known only to them and God. What makes Brandt’s words and example so remarkable – and why they have touched the heart of a natio...