If you get a couple of preachers together, the topic of preaching will eventually come up. Before you know it, one will ask the other, “Do you use a manuscript when you preach?”
This is because pastors are always looking for an advantage. In this way, preachers are like baseball players looking to refine their swing.
Preachers deliver their sermons in four main ways: They carry a manuscript to the pulpit to read, memorize and recite the manuscript, use a minimal outline, or preach extemporaneously.
In my experience of twenty-plus years of ministry, training preachers, and listening to thousands of sermons, most preachers should strongly consider not preaching from a manuscript. Because with a manuscript, while you may gain precision, you’ll sacrifice some ability to persuade your listener. In other words, I think preaching from a manuscript sacrifices engagement, both from the preacher and the hearer. Therefore, I favor a minimalist approach to my preaching notes.
An Illustration – Think GPS, not Teleprompter
When you think about sermon notes, think about how you use your GPS in the car. If you’re driving, you regularly check the map to ensure you’re on track. Your eyes aren’t glued to it. You’re watching the road, accounting for delays, and marking the progress. It’s the same with sermon notes. You should look down occasionally to get your bearings or a Scriptural reference or as a reminder of an illustration. If your eyes are glued to your GPS, then you’ll likely drive your car into a ditch. If your eyes are glued to your sermon notes, you’ll likely lose your passengers when you preach. Use your preaching notes like your GPS–as a guide, not a teleprompter.
Use your preaching notes like your GPS–as a guide, not a teleprompter.
Preaching Is A Conversation
If you bring a full manuscript into the pulpit, it’s difficult not to use it. And by using it, I mean reading it. This is why you’ll often see guys with their heads down, reading the introductions to their sermons or illustrations. I’ve even seen guys reading illustrations about things that happened in their family. We should be able to look up and make eye contact here, don’t you think? Guys will also read out their appeals to unbelievers with the gospel. It would seem that this would be one that we could square people up and look them in the eyes. Christian ministers should be able to preach the gospel without reading their notes.
Along these lines, Charles Spurgeon once emphasized the need for a lawyer to be able to speak extemporaneously to make his case. He says,
“What a barrister can do in advocating the cause of his client, you and I should surely be able to do in the cause of God. The bar must not be allowed to excel the pulpit.” (Lectures To My Students, 210).
Remember that a sermon is a conversation. As preachers, we are talking to and with our audience. And like a regular conversation, our preaching is aided by genuine eye contact. A sermon is not a TED talk, but it is interesting what an organization that exists to get information across through the medium of speech says about this,
“At TED, our number-one advice to speakers on the day of their talk is to make regular eye contact with members of the audience. Be warm. Be real. Be you. It opens the door to them trusting you, liking you, and beginning to share your passion.” (Ted Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking, 59)
I think preaching from a manuscript sacrifices engagement, both from the preacher and the hearer.
Get and Keep Them Engaged
If you’re like me, you want to think that everyone wants to listen to what you say because it’s important. But we know this isn’t always the case. After all, we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood.
I prefer to think of it as gaining and keeping my audience’s attention. Presuming I gain their ear, I don’t want to lose it. Failing to make eye contact is a way to lose their ear. Subtly, it can communicate the preacher’s disengagement with the hearer and pave the way for them to disengage with the preacher.
In his book, A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, John A. Broadus observes,
“Consider, too, that, the most potent element in the delivery of a real orator is often the expressiveness of the eye. No man can describe this; he cannot fully recall it afterward, and at the moment, he is too completely under its influence to think of analyzing and explaining it. But every man has felt it, –the marvelous, magical, at times almost superhuman power of an orator’s eye. That look, how it pierces our inmost soul, now kindling us to passion, now melting us into tenderness.” (p.413)
When we need all the help we can get, why sacrifice that ally Broadus calls “superhuman”?
As preachers, we can craft precise and pithy sentences in our studies on Thursday afternoon. What makes us think we can’t recall them on Sunday morning with our heads up and eyes locked on our audience? And what if it’s not “as perfect” as we wrote down (whatever that means)? It might land better when you say it naturally, coming straight out of the heart, in the moment, with your eyes focused on the congregation. This has certainly been my experience. What I thought I gained in precision, I lost in persuasion. And, due to working hard in the study and prayer during the week, what I thought I lost in precision (using fewer notes) was massively overestimated. You’d be surprised how your mind and heart work when filled with the Holy Spirit in the preaching moment.
More To Say
There’s a lot more I’d like to say here, but I think I’ll save it for another article. Before signing off, I do think there’s value in writing a manuscript (especially for younger guys or those newer to preaching with fewer notes). It helps you write yourself clearly so you can understand and own the concepts. After writing it, I recommend leaving it in your study and bringing something a bit more minimal into the pulpit.
I hope this brief post helps some preachers see the preciousness of engagement–both from the preacher to the audience and from the audience to the preacher. If something’s precious, you don’t want to lose it once you have it. This will keep your head up—and hopefully your hearers’ too.