Sermon Illustrations
Farmer Uses Mold to Make 'Pumpkinsteins'
There are heads growing on Tony Dighera's farm, and they're not made of lettuce. They're called "pumpkinsteins," and they look a lot like the Frankenstein creature that actor Boris Karloff made famous more than 80 years ago.
"It's so new, and it's so unique that demand has been off the charts," Dighera said. "A lot of people thought I was nuts. When I first started doing this I think every farmer in the world looked at me like I was a complete lunatic."
Dighera carefully builds a strong mold that encases the pumpkin yet permits air to reach the growing gourd inside. The pumpkin variety has to be just right. They can't be too big or they'll burst from the molds. Too small and the pumpkins won't fill the molds. Dighera still recalls the first time they squeezed that pumpkin head into the mold and it worked. Out came a re-formed (or should we say "de-formed") pumpkin that looked like Frankenstein's head.
Dighera doesn't know whether he has a thriving pumpkinstein until he removes the nuts and bolts from the mold and successfully removes the pumpkin. But don't expect pumpkinsteins to boot jack-o'-lanterns off the porch completely. They're not cheap. It costs 100 bucks to squeeze those pumpkins into a mold and reshape them into a monster.
Possible Preach Angles: Conformity; Renewing the Mind; Worldliness—What is molding your life? Don't let the world press you into its mold. The world constantly pressures the believer to conform to its image.