KM: So why are you calling it no-notes if it doesn’t mean no notes? Okay, let’s go to the opposite end of the spectrum, the no-notes approach. Now again, people like Mark Mitchell would advocate that you feel more relaxed so you have more connection, but it’s definitely a potential down side. MW: Yeah, I would say that is the biggest potential down side. When I had a manuscript, I felt closely connected to my manuscript, but I just didn’t feel as closely connected emotionally with my people. So Kevin, what’s the biggest weakness of the manuscript approach? Of course we’ve got podcasts and all that kind of stuff, but sometimes people like to read your sermon. MW: You could put it on your website, people can read it. ![]() KM: I saw people picking them up and taking them home, like if they missed the prior week they’d just pick it up. I didn’t use them in the pulpit but I love getting that precision, and another advantage of it is you have something that you can share with people. KM: Now, when you were pastoring out on Long Island you must have used manuscripts because I’d come in the church lobby and there’d be printouts of your last few weeks of sermons. ![]() They don’t necessarily read the manuscript, but they want it close by and it actually helps them preach with more freedom, not less. Having a manuscript allows me to relax in the pulpit. The Mark Mitchell article I mentioned, a lot of the comments came from preachers who admitted, I’m an introvert, and they basically said the same thing. MW: That is one of its greatest strengths. So when you need full precision you need a manuscript. I did it, for example, when I got to Ephesians 5 and was preaching about submission in marriage, I did it again when the controversy about is the God of Islam the same as the God of Christianity and people in our church were taking sides on that. So if I am preaching on a highly controversial topic, the kind where I know like one misspoken phrase could blow a hole in the sermon, I always will manuscript. KM: No, it isn’t and it shouldn’t die because to me one of the big, big advantages of manuscript preaching is it gives you full precision and control. So obviously manuscript preaching is not dead yet. Lately, I have been using a manuscript, I feel so much less stress and a freedom I have not felt in years.” That was an actual comment. I used to take an outline to the pulpit yet I was missing many important ideas. So he wrote this article advocating for manuscript preaching and there was, like, 20 comments from preachers on this, and they all went like this, “I was taught to preach without notes it was very stressful. He wrote an article for us titled, “ Confessions of a Manuscript Preacher.” He thinks manuscript preaching has gotten a really bad rap. Mark Mitchell is a preacher out in California, he is one of Preaching Today’s frequent contributors. There are some preachers-they’re in the minority-but they really are sold on the whole full manuscript idea. ![]() MW: Okay, let’s start with a full manuscript. Then we’ll wrap and we’ll share our personal thoughts. So analyze the strengths and weaknesses of three major schools of thought: Full manuscript, the no-notes approach, and a hybrid version where you bring in a moderate amount of notes. What I want to do here is analyze with strict objectivity, without interjecting our opinion, which is hard. So we’re going to do a whole podcast on it. MW: It’s totally nerdy and I thought it would be like, “This is a not really a topic for a podcast.” But then I went back and looked at some of our articles on it, and preachers get kind of emotional about this topic. That’s a nerdy preacher question, which is the kind we like. But we’ve got to cut right to the chase, because today we have a very interesting topic that is going to take some time to unpack and that’s a really practical topic of what do you bring into the pulpit with you? Do you bring a whole manuscript, do you bring notes, do you bring a little bit of notes? What do you bring with you? So like I said, we’ve started with baseball pitchers, the movie Jaws, a quote from Stephen King, songs with the word heart in the title, and then somehow we bring it all back to preaching. Kevin Miller: Did you say we, because I believe that is you. ![]() Hey Kevin, do you ever notice how we often start this podcast with a long, meandering intro that really has nothing to do with preaching? I’m here with our guest host, Kevin Miller. Thanks for joining us on Monday Morning Preacher, a podcast by preachers for preachers. Matt Woodley: This is Matt Woodley, editor of.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |