In lecture 17, what we want to do is look at the options a preacher has in preparing the materials necessary to preach a sermon. So here's the basic thing. We talk about introductions, conclusions, propositions, lots of things we've talked about. What have you actually taken to the pulpit to work with and how do you present it? So before we talk about delivery aspects which we'll be getting into, let's just talk about what are preachers take with them into the pulpit and how do they typically organize it? As you think of types of presentation, broader says there's three basic ways that preachers present messages and that's going to affect a little bit how we prepare what we're going to take up. So how I present it is going to affect what I prepare to take with me. If you think of three major presentations, it can be reading, reciting or extemporizing. I mean those are the basic options. I can simply read a message, memorize it and recite it, or some form of extemporizing. I have something in my brain but I'm still spontaneously speaking as I go. Tell me guys, this generation, which is most accepted, reading, recitation or extemporizing, no question extemporizing. Reading the people will not work in this generation. Now if you can naturally recite, that will work. But if it sounds like you're reading off a teleprompter, even while you're reciting, people will not listen. It will sound so canned it's not the generation that will listen to that kind of thing. So typically there is some form of extemporizing that we will use. Lewis Paul Layman gives a more exhaustive list of how both what we present and how we prepare affects things. And he talks about it in terms of different types of prepared messages. So we're going to talk about different types of prepared messages. First are manuscript sermons. A manuscript sermon could be read most famous preacher in history for reading sermons. Jonathan Edwards do not forget he stopped reading after a while, even in his generation it didn't keep working. So read but then stop doing it because he recognized it did not connect even with his own people. But manuscript sermons could be read or memorized. There are people who have the ability, the photographic memories. One is very close to us. That's Dr. Benton over at Kirk of the Hills. I mean if you listen to the message in the first service, the second service that you'll find is basically word for word and that he's not reading it. So I mean there are people with exceptional abilities but that's not most of us who are able to memorize. Which means a third use of manuscript sermons is that they might be converted to outlines and extemporized in the pulpit. So the manuscript is used to get you very ready and then you convert it to an outline and then extemporize in the pulpit off the outline. Which by the way is what we're going to do for two semesters. We're going to prepare manuscripts, convert them to outlines and preach from the outline. So the manuscript ensures preparation, the outline hopefully is ensuring eye contact and spontaneity. B, outlines sermons, basically two forms of outlines sermons. First called extended outlines, extended outlines. I would say this is what most preachers I know use. They preach from extended outlines. Two to four pages of outline material that they take into the pulpit. Two to four pages usually and speak off of that. Two is a bare bones outline and that is where usually a lot has been practiced and so the preacher doesn't even want the outline itself to rob him of eye contact. And so what he does is he creates something just as props, just things to prompt his memory and use that. Here's a bare bones outline that I use once upon a time and my goal, I can't get all there once. My goal is just to say, if I forget, it's my safety blanket, right? It's my security blanket. I just want something to prompt my thinking, but I don't want to be looking at this a lot. And so I've got something that just kind of gets me going and some of you've heard me preach in different settings. But bare bones outline is what I typically will take into the pulpit. I often look at it, but I always have that little security if I need it, I can refer to it. So it's something that has consistent visual markers. I usually use Roman numerals for major main points. I usually use Arabic numerals for sub points. I almost always will circle an illustration and I'll almost always use this little conclusion for application. I don't know why. I just did it years ago and I still do it. And it becomes something that's a consistent visual marker for me. So when I look on the page, I automatically know what I'm looking at. You'll see here in this main point, the illustrations in a different place. Here, the illustration came at the end of the main point. In this particular main point, the illustration came before the sub points. So I was moving where the illustration lay. But again, I use that circle because just in my habit over the years, I just use circles to indicate that's an illustration to distinguish it from my eye picking up main points. Michael, does it mean, and that's a good question. If you have extended outlines or bare bones outlines, does that mean that they have never existed in manuscript form? And the answer is no, it does not mean that. So this is what you take into the pulpit. But you may very well have had a manuscript outline that you converted to an extended outline or that you converted to a bare bones outline. Or what we're going to talk about just a little bit, which is where you're going, a truly extemporized sermon, which means it was never in manuscript form. So if I thought, some of you are experienced preachers here, what I think most preachers do, I think they prepare extended outlines and practice the extended outline so that the pulpit is not the first place that you're verbalizing what the extended outline says. Most preachers I know prepare an extended outline and at least practice portions of it before standing in the pulpit. Many preachers I know do the extended outline, practice it, and then convert to the bare bones outline, and that's what they'll take into the pulpit. So my own practice is, just tell you all, you may never want to do this, but it's what I find I have to do. I go from exogetical outline to extensive homological outline to full manuscript to bare bones outline. That's what I do just personally. I use the extended outline to prepare manuscript, prepare the manuscript, but then I do not want to take a manuscript into the pulpit with rare exceptions. And then I preach from a bare bones outline. It's what I typically do, and I'll talk to you more about why some of those things in just a bit. Let's see if the other alternative in front of us, beyond the outline sermons, there are what Lewis Paul layman calls unwritten sermons. We might call them extemporized, unwritten sermons, and under unwritten sermons he has two forms, what he calls mental outlines. And while you may never put pencil to paper, you still put an outline in your brain. You are working it out. These are the great sermons I think about when I'm jogging. And then I forget by the time I get back there. But these mental outlines sermons, you know, are ones that you've still thought through, or what he calls true impromptu, which means it's spur of the moment and you're just going. And maybe it's just as following the flow of the text, but it has just the spontaneity of the moment. Now, before we talk about the strengths and weaknesses of these, I'm going to talk about just a couple of modern variations, and that's D. Just some modern variations for you to think about. One is called putting the outline in the manuscript, so outline in the manuscript. If you look at the sermon that's at the back of your syllabus, in essence, with all those Roman numerals and bold face things and so forth, what's happening? It's making the outline jump out of the manuscript, still a full manuscript there, but the outline is kind of keyed into the message. And there's lots of ways that people do that. They'll do it with bold facing, they'll do it with different sized fonts, they'll simply write things out and do it with margin differences, or even take their highlighters out and highlight key things. So that's a form of writing the manuscript, but making your outline visible within the manuscript. Another thing that's a product of the media age in which we live now is a number of preachers who have discovered what are called broadcast manuscripts, in which they do this. They put the manuscript on only two thirds of the page, typically on the right hand side, with the manuscript on the right hand two thirds of the page, what's the left hand third of the page four. The outline is put there, so there may be key terms, for instance the illustration instead of reading the illustration, I may just put puppy dog, you know, and just write key terms in the left hand margin. Now those of you who've done broadcast work, you know, that's a little bit reversed, because typically in a broadcast situation you would put text on the left hand side, and the camera and audio cues are on the right hand. But that's because you're reading manuscript and the cues are over on the right for the director, but we're flipping it, because the first thing I want my eye to see are by notes to myself, my outline. So on the left hand margin, I'll put the outline features, and the right hand, if I want it, is the manuscript. And it's actually the folks that as very similar, they've been a lot experimenting with those broadcast styles, and I have found it, I did it for a few years, and found it quite effective when I was in password ministry particularly, that I would use the left hand margin for the outline, and therefore not become too dependent on the manuscript, but have it if I wanted it. So it's an alternative for you. There's a lot of strengths and weaknesses here. Let's first deal with the obvious, preaching with the impromptu method. What's the strength of preaching impromptu messages? It's not mechanical. It doesn't sound artificial a bit, okay, impromptu messages, and obviously it can be a great time saver, and sometimes you need a great time, you know, sometimes it is just time, and you were not given warning. I mean, these are times of crisis and tragedy that you simply need to speak, and those may cause impromptu messages. Tell me the weaknesses of impromptu messages. It's disorganized, it may not be put together. Take you forever. Determinated, that's right, for some people it takes forever to terminate, for other people it terminates too fast. It depends on personality there, but that's right. It may not have any clear direction. It may just have a lot of mistakes, and it obviously doesn't have much study behind it, and impromptu message. So the strength is, it's very natural, and it may simply save you the time you need in that moment, but its weaknesses obviously are its unpreparedness. And unpreparedness, how do I say this, is inherently, unless it's required, inherently unbiblical. Being unprepared is inherently unbiblical. Study to show yourselves a workman approved unto God who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. You know, preparation is needed to do what the Bible requires, so just being unprepared by habit rather than necessity is the problem. Unprepared by necessity, everyone understands by habit they don't. I give you just so that you know, I struggle with this. It sounds so easy right here in class, but I did struggle. My own background in tradition is, as I've mentioned to you, was primitive Baptist training, and the sense was that it was not only artificial, but inhibiting of the work of the Holy Spirit to prepare. You know, I really was helped by, was actually a man who was a defraught Methodist pastor. It may sound strange, but he's actually going to help me. He and his wife were in my church years after the troubles in their life, and I mentioned to him at one point that my background in training was in my father's church where, you know, those men would show up, and they would, two or three of them would just sit at the front and say, who wants to speak this morning? And when it's a, well, you know, the little conversation goes back and forth, all right, a man would decide and he would stand and he would speak, and it was viewed again as improper to have prepared. The Methodist minister listened to my saying that, and he said to me, what keeps the Holy Spirit from working in your study? And I thought, that is a great question. Nothing should keep the Holy Spirit from working in your study. The Holy Spirit works all places, all times. So he uses instruments that are well honed, but it seems to me that there is not anything at all unbiblical saying, I'm going to impose man's ideas on this process. True, if you haven't prayed in your study, but if you have prayed with your studying of the text, there isn't absolutely nothing that should have prohibited the Holy Spirit from doing his work there as well. Strengths and weaknesses of preaching extemporaneously from outlines. The advantages, I'm going to do this because we're running out of time here, okay. The advantages, obviously, if you have an outline, you have had some preparation. Still, by an outline only, it is a shortcut in a busy schedule, and outline is more quick to prepare than a full manuscript. So the advantages, it can be a shortcut in a busy schedule. Another advantage of preaching from outlines keeps eye contact and natural expression. Keeps eye contact and natural expression. And ordinarily allows more freedom and power of delivery. Ordinarily allows more freedom and power of delivery. The disadvantage of outline, preaching extemporaneously from outlines, would be what? Temptation to being unprepared. Still the temptation to do too little work. And again, there is the possibility of imprecision and mistakes, possibility of imprecision and mistakes. Now, I've mentioned to you how much I respect John Brodus, the father of expository preaching, and one of the reasons I do is how wise he is. And even in his era, which is basically 150 years ago, when you would think about the insistence on well-prepared and scholarly sermons of that era, listen to what he said where the advantages and disadvantages of this extemporaneously preaching from outlines. He said the style of an extemporaneous sermon is apt to be less condensed to your point, it may just run on and on, less finished than if it were written out or recited. But this is not necessarily a fault. The style may be better adapted to speaking as opposed to writing. Hear that, it may sound more like you sound when you talk, and therefore not artificial. But he said this, a similar and more serious disadvantage of extemporaneous sermons is the danger of making blunders in statement. In the order of the moment, the speaker is likely to say some things that are irrelevant, ill-considered, improper, and sometimes alas, even untrue. Some men, more than others, run this risk, but all are more or less liable. Some hints may be given as safeguards make thorough preparation, and thus diminish the danger, keep a cool head, no matter how warm the heart. If the slip is serious, correct it on the spot and go on. If very serious, but not observed at the time, correct it on a later occasion. But for the most part, leave the mistakes alone. If you have real merits, and enjoy the confidence of your congregation, it will be one of your most blessed privileges to live down many blunders. Err, tease your pastor for what he said, and kind of when he blushed and smiled and said, thank you, you actually loved him more, because he could take it well. So he said, obviously, it's a real mistake, you know, correct it. One of my favorite examples of this was Dandoriani, who is one of the best preachers and teachers I know. And when he was a new professor, his inaugural sermon here in the chapel, he was preaching away, and as he was preaching away, he said, Jesus Christ is so great, he is the greatest of the created beings. And he said, no, he's not, that's a heresy. And I'll be the first to deny it. Now what he did was, he made a terrible blunder, but it didn't bother him. It didn't bother him, but if you remember this, the mark of great speakers is not that they fail to make mistakes. But they're poised when they make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. And if you can kind of take it, live it down and move on, that's great. And actually people will be very comfortable with you. Preaching from written manuscripts, what are the advantages? Obviously, great precision and assured preparation. The disadvantage, lack of eye contact, and the temptation to read. What method are we going to use? What method will we use? Roman 3? It is actually the method of Robert Murray McShane. It had interesting just last week, we had the man from his church here. We had David Robertson, who was here from St. Peter's Free Church, which was the famous church of Robert Murray McShane, the revivalist, who died young. But here's what he did. Prepared a manuscript, converted to an outline, and preached from the outline. He felt it greatly aided the order and passion of his speaking, but still came from great preparation. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to prepare manuscripts, but preach from outlines. Just a few hints I've already mentioned. After writing out a manuscript, we're going to put our outline in a key word form in the margin. Another thing you do is you put your outline in the manuscript, using highlights or underlining or margin variation, various other visual symbols. Or you could put the outline on another piece of paper. That's what I do. Using, as I said, consistent eye catchers. Whatever style for you over time, develop a consistent eye catcher. Keep main points from starting at the bottom of pages. I would just encourage you to do that. You've got lots of paper. If you will not start main points two-third down on the page, you'll keep from confusing your eye. Experience preachers typically start all main points at the top of the next page, even if they've got lots of white space at the bottom. Because they know they're not trying to look at people while they're flipping pages. They're moving pages while they're talking. And they're looking here. So I want my eye to be able to look down and know exactly where it is. And if I'll start the main point at the top of pages, I'll automatically be oriented to the next main point every time I do a transition. So start main points at the tops of pages. Find some visual marker like circling to indicate where you are. By the way, what I just did is very important, which was, if you're moving pages, I would encourage you to slide them. If you do this, what did everybody just do? They just looked at my notes. Or if I do this, watch the people who are very concerned about sticking with people. And don't want them looking at their notes. They learn to just move, move them across. And they typically have a discard stack and a use stack. I use this stack. When I'm done with it, I look at you, but I know I put in a discard side. I'm done with that when I'm ready for the next page. I may pick up my Bible, slide this under, and move it over. But I typically do not want to be putting this thing in people's eye line and vision. It just creates distraction to people. What we're trying to do, as we follow these various methods, is we are trying to make sure that we have enough in front of ourselves that we can preach well. And at the same time, be able to have lots of eye contact with people. Last items here, you know I'm moving fast, item D under Roman 4. How can you preach from memory so you're keeping lots of eye contact? My best hint is use keywords. Use keywords. If your main points are around Father, Faith, and Tomorrow, even though the main point statement is much longer, having keywords in order really helps you. Father, Faith, tomorrow, use keywords that are parallel. Use illustrations to key your thought. Look at this. The illustration is automatically the summary of the explanation and the preparation for the application. Those of you who are very visual-oriented, if you will remember the series of illustrations, the whole sermon will appear in front of you. Just by remembering, going to this illustration, that illustration, that whole sermon will appear in front of you, because it's reminding you what the explanation is about and preparing for what the application is about. Finally, I would encourage you to learn the principles of imprinting. You all may never want to do this, but it's just what I do. I just believe in how I know how my mind works. If I've prepared a 30-minute message, I will try to go through entirely at least twice the day before. It's just what I do. Out loud, because I believe it's not just in my brain, I want to hear how the words sound. So I will go through it entirely at least twice the night before. The last thing I do before I go to sleep is I read it even while I'm in bed. I went the last thing that goes into my brain to be that message. I believe in imprinting. I want that to go into my brain. What am I going to do the first thing I do in a wake-up in the morning? First thing I do before I have my bowl of syrup before anything else, I read through it again. Because I'm trying to imprint that on my brain. So that when I'm finally speaking, I'm not wondering where I'm going. My greatest concern now is to get the message into you, not to get it out of me. I'm trying to get it into you because it's planted in my brain. Now, that's lots of work. Think about that. If I just 30-minute message, I said, twice out loud, once before I go to bed, once when I get... There's two hours of practice right there. Now, that may sound awful, but I remember Ozzy Smith, you know, the multiple-time goal-glover, best shortstop, perhaps ever in baseball. When did he show up at the ballpark for a 7-30 game? 3-30. And he took grounders for at least an hour and a half. He was the best shortstop of all time, and he practiced. Don't let anybody embarrass you about practicing. What you're trying to do is get yourself ready so that you're finally free. Can you over-prepared, of course? But you're trying to get so prepared that you are very free to say what God has given you to do.