This morning, I preached on the basic truth that God responds to simple prayers of desperation. The sermon focused on the second half of the Lord's Prayer. I would provide the manuscript for you but I never wrote one.
Last month, I felt constrained by my manuscript in a sermon and I struggled with presenting the material. The largest contributor to my struggle was my feeling that I had to stay with my manuscript or at least the ideas on it. I received numerous feedback that I appeared tense and concerned about my points as I shared them. I realized that I had written over 75 papers in seminary but I had only written 5-6 sermons. I have had more practice writing papers than writing/delivering sermons and it was showing in my preaching. I consulted with my head of staff and he suggested that I should ditch the manuscript and try preaching from an outline.
This week, I decided to go one step further and ditch all of my notes. I was able to spend more time in prayer and reading about my topic as opposed to typing up a 12-15 page sermon manuscript. My prayers ended up matching the controlling theme of my sermon - that God would respond to a simple prayer of desperation or dependence. I needed God's help in sharing. I didn't share from a typed manuscript or even from a set of notes. Instead, I shared from what God had already truly taught me and I was able to communicate with Maple Valley Presbyterian as opposed to talking at them.
I honestly have not felt that comfortable with sharing in public since I shared at an InterVarsity event years ago. During that event, I shared from a 4 point outline that simply listed my main point, a few story references and a concluding Scripture verse.
I don't know if I will be able to consistently preach in this way but I would like to try it again. My preaching today required more dependence on God than any other time and I felt like I practiced what I preached - letting God respond to simple prayers of desperation (dependence).
3 comments:
very cool Jeff! I honestly couldn't imagine writing a 12-15 page manuscript. I get to 6 and that's about as much as I can write. Preaching for 45 minutes is a huge endeavour and writing a manuscript for that sermon must be a ton of work. I can understand why you might be tense about preaching it. I mean, if you veer off substantially, you could end up cutting the sermon in half and everyone winds up going "done already?"
I'm excited to hear one of these some day. MVPC podcasting yet?
What a step of faith, Jeff! I know I'm not quite ready to do what you just did, but I know that someday down the line I'll be getting rid of the manuscript in favor of an outline. I've been doing shorter "talks" (5-7 minutes) with just ideas that I've been working on, and I've really enjoyed doing those. I haven't taken the time to listen back to what I said. I have no idea how coherent I sound when I have done that. (Believe it or not, someone told me last night that I preach like Joel Osteen. I told her that if that's the impression I'm leaving her, I need to change!) Anyway, great work. Just remember that we're all still figuring this whole preaching thing out. Trust that God will do better things with your words than you can hope for.
Hi Jeff,
Dr. LaRue told me after my first sermon in PR 201 that I would never be a manuscript preacher. This was so freeing for me to hear my prof say that. It sounds like you really are made for the West Coast!!
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