Video Transcript: Session 31 Presentation of Material
This is session 31 out of 36 in this class on making and preaching sermons, and we've been talking about for several weeks now, several times now, the idea of presentation, how do you make your presentation I, I set up a principle a couple
of sessions ago, that presentation will trump information. In other words, you can have the best information possible, you may have done your sermon preparation, and you've got all kinds of great information. But if it is not presented in a compelling way, with gestures, or visual aids or voice modulation, that sort of thing. It the information won't get through to the people. So we've been talking about how you make a presentation effective. Now today, you'll notice the title of this one notes, question mark manuscripts, question mark, no notes, question mark. In other words, what do you bring into the presentation, immediate presentation in order to help you remember what you're saying? What what do you need to do in that regard? Now, just want to reflect for just a moment on some of these popular presenters in English in the United States, at least. Tony Evans, incredibly effective preacher, Andy Stanley's in the middle here, and Rick Warren, down on the lower left, and Francis Chan. Now, each of them is known for incredibly effective presentation of messages. People remember them, that's why they're invited to speak. That's why people buy their books. That's why, why these people are sought after is because they've become known for being able to take information from the scriptures, and present it in such a way that people are saying, Yes, I get it. And it means something for me. But it's interesting to note that they all have different styles as far as what they bring into the preaching event with them. Andy Stanley has a cheat sheet. In other words, he has a Bible in which he puts his printed scripture, but he takes in through his computer, he pastes in notes that he can quick glance at while he's speaking. And he speaks sitting at a table. So you can glance down at what he's going to say, you know, Francis Chan tends to be a no notes kind of person, it'll just be a flowing thing. And he will have studies and he's presenting it to to you, but he's got the Bible in, that's all. So different styles can work. That's all my point here. But you've got to pay attention to the styles. I've just found this cartoon, it's only semi relevant. So pastor saying to the musician, just because I'm preaching without notes, doesn't mean you should sing without them. Now, the only point here is that it takes different strokes for different folks. So how do you present your message? What do you take into the preaching event? To help you remember, there are a bunch of different options, here are some of them, you can take a full manuscript and read it, you're gonna have your full manuscripts that you will have written in your study a full manuscript, and then you memorize it. Or you can have a full manuscript converted to an outline. And the outline is what you take into the presentation. Or you can do an extended outline that you take into the presentation. Or you can do a very bare bones outline that just as the major points, maybe sub points, or you can extemporize have no notes at all, we're going to look at each
of those for a few moments today, just to give you an idea of the options that you have, and what might fit your style. Well. So first one is a full manuscript, you take a full manuscript, and you read it. In other words, you go through the discipline of writing out a manuscript, and then you get up and you read it to people. Now, there are some advantages, as you'll note here, first of all, it ensures that you're going to prepare, when you go to the discipline of writing out a manuscript, you have had to study, you have had to go through the process of figuring out what words are going to resonate with your people and precision of expression. This kind of approach is usually used by two different kinds of people, one kind of person wants to get the wording Exactly. And I've met people, I've listened to people who preach that way that they want their wording is so precise that we looked a while back about the importance of the words that you choose. While some people will want to use a full manuscript and read it will do so because they want, they want desperately to just put it down the way that they had it. There's another kind of group of people, though, who will read their manuscript, and that's people who are terrified, they're going to forget something. And that may be you too. So you might want to consider doing a full manuscript and reading and now there are advantages to that, as you can see, but there are disadvantages as well. Here are some of them. Eye contact is limited. You just can't connect with everybody if you're reading, and in fact, people who read their manuscripts will tend to have very little contact eye contact with their audience at all, because they're so concerned about getting the words, right. And so it limits eye contact, which is very important. As far as people connecting to you, we'll look in a couple of sessions about building bridges to people. And limits freedom of expression, when you're reading a manuscript, you're going to be less likely to all of a sudden go off on a tangent. If that tangent's from the Holy Spirit, you might miss an opportunity. And I've had it happen in my preaching not often enough, I don't think but every once in a while, I will find in my preaching, that I'm starting to see things I had never planned to say. And I'm very precise at what I say in their sermon at any given time. But all of a sudden, I will be going off on a tangent somehow. And I learned to recognize as I've listened to people who've heard these tangents, that that's a time when the Holy Spirit is speaking to someone in a way that I hadn't planned. Maybe I didn't prepare correctly, I don't know. But all of a sudden, I can become spontaneous responding to what I feel the Spirit is saying, or responding to what I feel the audience's is giving me as far as feedback goes. So if I'm reading my manuscript, I'm not able to do that now. A word about that spontaneity that this can be dangerous. And I've told you before that one of the things I love to do in a gathering of pastors to simply ask, what's the funniest thing that's ever happened to you in ministry? And I know one of my seminary professors, this man was a very distinguished looking man, you have this beautiful mane of gray hair. He was just known as a gentleman, right? And I encountered him I had
been out of seminary for five or six years. So I hadn't talked to him since but we ended up both being at the Luzon Congress for world evangelization in the Philippines, in Manila. And we were sitting in this big conference center having a bag lunch, and I have to run into him. So I sat down and I said, Tell me Rich, his name was, so what is the funniest thing that's ever happened to you in, in preaching, or in in your ministry? And he said, Well, he said, You know, I'm not a great preacher. He said, I always have a full manuscript, and I read it. So I just, I'm afraid I'm gonna forget some stuff. So that's how I preach. But he said one time, he said, I felt like the Holy Spirit was saying something to me, as an image came to mind. I said I was preaching about sin. And our sin that you're always starts small in our life. But then it grows, and it grows and grows and grows, kind of like that. Crouching lion, we talked about a while back. So he sort of grows and grows this and I was preaching, I was reading my manuscript, and all of a sudden, this image came of somebody being consumed by an octopus of the octopus reaches out and grabs him with one arm, tentacle, and then he reaches out with the other. And gradually, all eight of them are pulling into you into destruction. He says, I went away from my manuscript decided I was going to be spontaneous. And he said, What I said was, if seen as kind of like an octopus, it reaches out and grabs you with his testicles. That's a funny moment. And it happened because of spontaneity. And so you've got to be aware that if you're going to read manuscripts, at least spontaneous, you got to be careful to how it comes across. But even then, you know, I mean, it's a great moment of providing the laugh for the congregation, and actually built. He didn't preach regularly in a given church, but preached in many different ones. With that congregation, he is loved. And because of that mistake, so spontaneity is limited. And it requires extensive preparation, because you've got to discipline yourself to read a write a manuscript that is readable. So option number two, you can do a full manuscript and write it out. But you can take an outline into the message. Now, there are some advantages to this, obviously, first of all, you've got the same main advantages and before our excuse me, this is full manuscript memorize. There are advantages to that, first of all, you've got the same precision of expression. And but now you can do eye contact, but there are disadvantages. First of all, it's tough to memorize that much. Now, some people have a gift. In fact, they have a gift to be able to memorize things in such a way that it's easy for them. I'm part of a prayer group in the area in which I live, a pastor's and we get together and pray for each other, but there was one who's has now moved away. So this man would memorize whole books of the Bible. And he would do a presentation of them and it's powerful to hear somebody just get up and talk through a whole book of the Bible. Hosea or I John, or I think the biggest one he ever did was Romans, that, you know, he'll do speaking but he he was gifted in that it may be you are. And so you could take a manuscript, and you can memorize it. Now the disadvantages of it is it's tough. And it can lead to
some woodenness of expression. In other words, someone is so concerned about getting the words right, that you're memorizing that you're thinking about that instead of connecting with your audience. That can happen. Or you could just forget. I mentored through our denomination, a young man as a program where he would be put in our church for a year to work with an experienced pastor, and I was to help him develop his skills, and then he would be launched into ministry. And so this young man was looking at what he was going to do as far as presentation goes. And he decided that this was going to be something he would try to write out a manuscript and he memorized it. But unfortunately, he was going along and his message, and all of a sudden, he forgot what he was going to say next, just a mind blip, but he forgot what he's going to say. And so he's sitting there kind of like, with his mouth half open, he wasn't skilled enough at that point to cover that by just keeping talking. And so it was just uncomfortable moment until he went back. And he always had his manuscript up there. And so began paging through it until he found his point, and then he can go on again. So notice there are a dangerous here. And again, there's extensive preparation time, well, let's look at a full manuscript. And then you bring an outline into the preaching events, this happens to be my favorite, because it's one that I do, there are advantages, you've got complete preparation of thought, because you've written down a manuscript, my manuscript tends to be pretty rough. In other words, I don't play details unless I was putting it out republishing, which happened a few times. And then then you go through, and you clean it all up and make sure everything's good, but, but I would use a rather complete manuscript. And, and I did that for a couple of reasons. One, early on, when I was learning to preach, I realized that that helped me put my thoughts together. I'm not a wordsmith. Some people who are gifted at that I admire greatly, but I would write out the manuscript so that I could remember it. What what happened is that the first summer assignment, I had a ministry and I had to preach every week in this church in Tucson, Arizona. And every week, I would come back and I would file my my sermon outline. And it was just an outline at that point. And then, when I got back to school, the next year, the seminary sends people who have been through that experience of learning to preach how to preach elsewhere, I would get out these outlines, and I would say, example of old man, what old man couldn't remember the story. And so I began writing out these rather complete manuscripts. But what I took into the pulpit for years, was just an outline, that helped me maintain, maintain eye contact with people, it helped me maintain spontaneity, that I could be listening to the Spirit, even as I listened to the congregation. But the disadvantage, primary disadvantage is that that takes a lot of preparation and a lot of work as well. But that may be what you would choose as well. Now, there's another choice, you could take an extensive outline into the pulpit with you. In other words, and that's the way you prepare your message. Now, in that case, more is better, you know, more of the
outline written, and more of it being practices, we'll talk about in a moment. The disadvantages that can be to wooden unless you practiced it pretty well. A young man that was on staff with me in the last church I served with through the process of becoming ordained, and in that process was learning to preach. And so we talked about, how are you going to? How are you going to present your message? What are you going to take into the pulpit with you or we don't have a pulpit, but what are you going to take that you put on the stand, when you're going to preach when you take, and he decided that he was going to do this extensive outline, but he did it in such a way that he put memory colors in there. So he would highlight certain colors, the main points were in colors, and the sub points are in a different color. And other ones were not colored at all, and he didn't have to pay attention so he could flip a page on the outline as he was going through it and he could immediately pick out well, this is the main point of what I'm saying that sort of thing. A disadvantage, if you don't practice as well. It can come off as very wooden. And again, very similar to the reading your manuscript, bare bones outline advantages. You've got a spontaneous expression, you got eye contact you rapid preparation, a disadvantage of just doing that pre preparation is you're going to forget it, but also to encourage ill prepared thought that you'll you'll have only thought through things well and this time is to be a lazy a person's approach can be done effectively, it leads to brevity or length. If you're not paying attention, you know, you'll be too short as you'll be too long, because you really don't know how long it is. First time I preached in my home church, I was a seminarian. And I was at that point, as I said, just doing some kind of bare bones outlines. And I remember preaching in the church, I grew up in the pastor preached an average about 45 minutes. And so they have stripped the evening service in particular of everything else, you sang a song or two, he preached and then you prayed, and you're done. Okay, so I come with my message that night, I preached for 17 minutes. By six o'clock service, it was, that's when it started, we were done by 6:35. And I remember one woman coming out and saying, you'll be a good preacher, when you learn to preach longer. But it was partly the bare bones outline, I didn't know really how long it took to preach that. And then there are those who say you should take no notes into the preaching event. And this allows for immediacy of communication. It may be that you've not just memorized it, we're going to talk about a moment about internalizing the message. But you're you're ready to talk, you're ready to communicate with these people who are raised here, gives you eye contact allows you to think about body language as we reflected on. But there are disadvantages, and that this takes a lot of preparation, and the disadvantage of forgetfulness. While you preach. Now, there are some in my area who are known as excellent, excellent preachers, and they are, who use no notes at all. I have great admiration for them. And if you can do this, it's going to be powerful you in fact, one of the people who was impressive to me in this regard is Lloyd
John Ogilvy. And he was longtime As quoted him before longtime pastor at Hollywood Presbyterian Church and became a chaplain of the Senate for the United States. I was in a small seminar with him that he was one of the guest speakers in the seminar. So there's about 25 of us guys sitting in a room. And he came and talked to us about his preaching in particular. And he talked about how he determined that he was going to get rid of everything, all notes. Now he had a good memory. So he memorized poems, he memorized, you know, Song words, those kinds of things that he was going to use said, but it gave me a chance to really connect with people. Since he was in this church, I had a big pulpit, of course, he said, and I found that when I was, there was almost like, there was a block between me and the congregation, that this pulpit, they got only see from here up on me. And so he's decided to come out from behind the pulpit and talk with people. And in fact, I watched the tape of him later video. And, you know, he even in a small crowd came down and sat in the first few seats of the sanctuary because they weren't populated with people. And it gave him such an immediacy of connection. So he talks about, you know, I try to not just memorize the sermon, that's not what he does memorize his parts of it. But I'm trying to be immediate with my, with my connection with people. So he called it internalizing the message. And here are some clues to how to do that. One, memorize movements within the message. In other words, you know, keep in mind your main points, find a way of setting those aside in your memory, memorize the illustrations, if you're going to tell a story, or tell it well, if you're going to do poems, I always read poems, I used to memorize them years ago, but My memory isn't as good as it used to be. But if you can memorize it, good, but otherwise, just read it, Word, Word songs, get familiar with the small parts, and that build in some crutches. Now for Andy Stanley, he's the one who will put little notes he'll take our clip in his Bible, the Scripture reading, and then you have little notes that he puts in the sideline that he's brought into his computer program. And so people think he's just preaching out of the Bible, but he's got some crutches in there. Some main points that will give him a place to go back to, I tend to use PowerPoint as a crutch. I put pictures in PowerPoint, much as I do for these lectures, as a way of building in a crutch. Just given me something, they'll get me back to, oh, yes, that's the point I'm making at this point. And then practice, practice, practice. I preach through a sermon that I'm going to preach at least three times fully before I get up and preach it before an audience, sometimes four, because I want to get the flow, right. And I want to get so that my memory is connecting and putting the pieces together. And then of course, you know, I do that with what's going to be on the screen at that time. And so, whatever you choose to do, my counsel to you is learn to do it well. Practice whatever you need to do whatever style you need to have, practice it so that it's you talking to a group of people communicating to them you not just giving them information, but giving them yourself as well and giving a message that you've
internalized to some degree so that it becomes immediate communication to them. And you'll find that your preaching becomes more effective. The more you practice, the more you put these principles or whatever style you choose into practice effectively. So blessings as you decide what's best for you, as a communicator of God's Word. We'll see you next time.