Whether you are preaching or writing, introductions are of critical importance. Here is one of the greatest literary introductions ever. . . If you don’t appreciate it, your initials may be E.C.S.
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and his schoolmasters called him Scrubb. I can’t tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn’t call his father and mother “Father” and “Mother,” but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotalers and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on the beds and the windows were always open. Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools. C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
I love introductions and opening lines. One of my favorites: “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”