What is the best way to preach? To use notes — even to the point of reading a sermon — or not to use notes? Fred Lybrand, a Southern Baptist preacher who seems to be cutting his own path, opts for the “not to use notes” approach in his new, useful, handy, clear book Preaching on Your Feet. I should perhaps tell my own story before I go any further.
But to my story. Why? No use talking about preaching if you don’t back it up with how you do things. When I began preaching I had no idea what I was doing so I imitated, quite unconsciously, those I admired. Some of them were pastors and others of them were professors. That led to the use of fairly complete notes, including quotations. Then I read John Stott’s book Between Two Worlds where he urged young pastors to write out their sermons and then, after ten years if I remember right, to begin preaching from notes. So I did this, but I wasn’t comfortable doing this. Teaching for a decade or so became my teacher and it led to being more comfortable with an outline. To this day I tend to speak from a sketchy outline. I now use a “Journal” for all sermon notes (and all kinds of other things) and I preach from that. But I cheat when I say this: I don’t do the weekly preaching thing where I am asked to give a new sermon every week. Instead, I can have ten sermons in a row where a church asks me to do something on Jesus Creed. And I never really give the same sermon twice because I speak from notes and adjust as I go along and as I see what is happening … and this leads me to Lybrand’s theory.
Preaching on your feet is his studied expression on the basis of years of preaching: it involves deep study, strategizing your sermon and then preaching. But without notes. I know there are many against this approach, but — as long as one can have a few notes (and I tend to have less than a small page of notes) — I think he’s right. Here are his reasons for “preaching on your feet” (I’ve italicized what I consider most important):
1. Time management: you save the hours it takes to write out a sermon or write out thick notes.
2. Connection with the audience: eye-to-eye is better than eye-to-manuscript-to eye. The struggle here is palpable for those who sit and listen.
3. Remembering: if you can remember it, they can remember it.
4. Humility: struggling to find the best word is normal human existence.
5. Adaptability: good preachers read the eyes of those who listen and adapt and adjust to the levels of comprehension.
6. Holy Spirit led. Obvious and potentially a source of abuse and an excuse for lack of preparation. Still, Lybrand gets this right. Preaching on the feet is more susceptible to Spirit guidance — in the moment — than reading the ms. But, Spirit guidance occurs as well in the writing of the ms. But it is not in the moment.
7. Personality trumps plagiarism: Lybrand is big on each preacher having personality, that person’s personality and not someone else’s.
8. An act of faith.
9. Growth in confidence.
10. Readiness.
11. A walk with God is more intimate to preaching …
12. You become sharper (if not smarter).
13. Fresh delivery.
14. Joy in preaching.
15. Audience is expectant.
Lybrand covers it all, but this point might be the most significant: there’s no example that anyone was using notes or reading a sermon or (he argues) preaching an “expository” sermon in the Bible. The only method we see is preaching on one’s feet. And he has a chp listing the great preachers whose studied practice was preaching on their feet: Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, etc..
And he says something important: too many preachers today are using their seminary professors’ lectures as models for preaching. The differences in context, purpose, audience, content, etc, are obvious.