IDEAS AT WORK
Preaching without notes next Sunday morning might become one of the most rewarding experiences of your life, according to Craig Skinner. Here are five tips that work for him.
Craig Skinner
April 1, 1980
EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING Who would deny that Billy Graham is a great preacher? While he obviously possesses unique communicative gifts, Dr. Graham readily admits that his freedom in the pulpit, liberty in articulation, and the power to retain the attention of his audience come through careful discipline and hard work. Recently, he affirmed that his communicative skills are related to two major concerns: material saturation and commitment to illustrations. For the first five or six years of his ministry he wrote his sermons in full, and often preached each one up to twenty-five times before facing an audience. "I would find an empty church or building," he said, "and preach that sermon until I knew my outline, where my stories fit, and exactly what I was going to say." Even today, despite the verbal skills that have come with maturity, he still writes out a potential sermon word for word. But now, as then, he carries as little paper into the pulpit as possible. Can you imagine standing in your pulpit with the briefest of notes, or even with no notes of any kind? What would it be like for you to stand free and open next Sunday morning and fix the congregational eye unlimited and unencumbered by a notes barrier? Would it help release your thoughts and words and propel them into communication unbound by the shackles which thoughts-anchored-to-paper create? Such an experience is exhilarating! It casts the preacher into an immediate dialogue with his listeners, stimulating their minds and emotions as the Holy Spirit uses the full resources of the human personality to communicate God's truth. When communication becomes intimate, direct, and powerful like this, its content increases in challenge and acceptability. The potential for effective ...
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