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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781426720635 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abingdon Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 134 |
| File size: | 700 KB |
About the Author
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Preaching Without Notes
By Joseph M. Webb
Abingdon Press
Copyright © 2001 Abingdon PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-2063-5
CHAPTER 1
Planning the Sermon without Notes: Monday and Tuesday
The decision to preach a sermon without notes should be made before the sermon is prepared, not after. This is because preaching without notes requires one to prepare in some strikingly different ways than if one plans to write out and preach from a manuscript, or even to preach from an extensively worked outline. It is not, in other words, just a matter of "having a sermon" and deciding to preach it without notes. That can be done, of course, but usually with considerable difficulty, and the result is often not very satisfying either to preacher or to congregants.
This does not mean, though, that there is only one way to prepare the sermon for preaching without notes. Just as there are many different styles and types of sermons, so preachers learn to prepare and preach sermons in many different ways. Students in seminary homiletics classes hear different things from different professors, as they undoubtedly should, and the continuing appearance of new books on how to preach in today's world provides a strong sense that there is no one way to carry out this most important of pastoral responsibilities. Despite such differences, however, the preacher still has to decide, at some point, what to say in the sermon and then how to get it said. For our purposes here, the question is whether the preacher goes about the planning and preparation of the sermon any differently after deciding to preach it without notes.
The answer is yes. It is not that one must learn new ways of preparing a sermon. What this decision means is that the preacher will emphasize and even concentrate on certain aspects of the sermon preparation process knowing that he or she will enter the pulpit or step onto the platform without notes. It will also mean that sermon preparation time will be used in different ways when one plans to preach without notes. Finally, it will mean that what we might call the "emotional" disciplines of sermon preparation will be different, since what happens in the hours leading up to the sermon's delivery will be altered significantly in order to preach without notes. Knowing all this in advance makes the task of preparing and preaching the sermon without notes much easier and much less time-consuming; it also ensures that the sermon preached will be far more effective than it would otherwise be.
So we will begin with the sermon-planning process itself, starting with what amounts to a brief review of the major elements in shaping the sermon's content. We do so, however, not for the sake of review, but in order to explain what makes the sermon without notes different in the planning. In addition, here and in the remaining chapters of this book, we will tie the steps in the overall process to specific days of the sermon-making week. We do this because one learns very quickly that preaching well without notes must be a highly disciplined process requiring nothing less than a conscious commitment on the part of the preacher. One can, of course, try one or two sermons without notes to see how it works, or if one likes it. But one will never become truly effective at preaching without notes unless one is willing to do it week in and week out, growing better and better at it over time. It is a learned skill, based on practiced activities, and the daily and weekly procedures of planning and preparation are indispensable to its success. The payoffs, though, are beyond anything that one who has not tried it can imagine. The following basic plan should be carried out over the first two days of one's workweek for the following Sunday.
Different preachers begin the sermon from different points, just as any given preacher can begin different sermons from different starting points as well. Sometimes one begins with a text, as those who are lectionary preachers virtually always do. Other preachers begin with an idea, a topic, something that he or she particularly wants to say in a given circumstance or on a particular occasion. One can, of course, go back and forth— sometimes a text kicks off planning, sometimes a topic that one takes to a particular text generates the idea. Despite their interchangeability both of these starting points are very important, and with whichever idea one begins—text or topic—the other must be taken up next, usually in interaction with the first. So we will consider each of them briefly here, beginning with the biblical text, whether it is assigned or chosen by the preacher.
Working With the Text
Frequently, the preacher turns to a biblical text without any particular idea about what the sermon will be about, let alone actually say. When this happens, one usually depends on the text to provide at least the kernel of content from which the final sermon will grow. As every preacher knows, though, this encounter with a biblical text— any biblical text—is one of the most complex dimensions of the entire sermon-making process. For some preachers, the words of the Bible are the very words of God, and sermon planning amounts to finding ways to repeat those words in new ways without altering what is taken to be their once-and-for-all meaning. For other preachers, Jesus is the Word to be found in the midst of the Bible's words, so one peels away the layers of language in order to discover and preach the real historical Jesus who came to earth as the Son of God. For still other preachers, the Bible is a complex collection of assorted historical documents that arose from the varied communities that developed into churches from the late first century through the second and third centuries; so what we have in the Bible is the record of several distinct faith traditions, all built around a figure who was thought to be God come to earth. Moreover, it is these various historical traditions that have coalesced into the multiple religious groupings called churches or denominations in which we who preach have chosen to take up our lives.
I sketch this to indicate the extraordinary, though often overlooked, range of attitudes that working preachers today bring to the Bible. It is one's view of the Bible, moreover, that dictates how one interacts with a biblical text for preaching. One can read a text in order to listen to it and speak what it says, or one can carry out a kind of dialogue with a text, hearing it but talking back to it, being suspicious of it, or even rejecting its assertions or implications. Despite all of this, the sermon, in my view, should somehow take account of the text. The biblical text, that is, should be part of the sermon; but more than that, the sermon should reflect the preacher's own overt dealings with the text, whatever form they take. We live in a time when laypeople of all kinds want desperately to know about the Bible—what it is, where it came from, why and how it has come to be understood as "Word (capital W), or word (lowercase w), of God." Candor about the Bible and its texts seems to be a particularly pressing obligation facing the preacher today—whatever the preacher's tradition or theological orientation.
So the preacher may begin sermon planning by working in a text. One uses all of the exegetical tools, presuppositions, and procedures that one has been taught within a theological tradition. Whatever the processes, however, if one is planning a sermon to be preached without notes, one thing becomes paramount: You take detailed notes on your examination of the text. You can say, "Of course I take notes when I do my exegetical work," but the point is that when you work on or think through a text that will be part of a sermon preached without notes, it is even more important that your findings and thoughts be very carefully and meticulously recorded. This, in fact, is the first key difference in how one prepares to preach without manuscript or notes.
If the text is a story or a narrative, whether from the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament, even the details of the story need to be written down. This is because if a preacher chooses to use the story in the sermon, as is often the case, he or she must actually learn the story in its color and detail in order to bring it to life. If a preacher chooses to retell the Bible story, it must be told well, and from memory. The first step in doing that is writing down the story's progression and details, including the names, actions, and interactions of its characters. One can reply, "If I decide to use the text's story in the sermon, then I will write down and learn the story's detail." Keep in mind, however, that often the decision of whether or not to use the story in the sermon arises from a more intimate sense of the story's own inner workings. In other words, a pastor often decides to use the biblical story as part of the sermon because it has been written out.
The same is true of virtually every other kind of biblical material with which one chooses to preach, whether a psalm from the Hebrew Bible, a section from one of the Minor Prophets, a part of a Pauline letter, or even a pericope from the Apocalypse of John.
You should also record as fully as possible what you learn exegetically about a text, regardless of how the information is gathered. Your notes should include your own thoughts and interactions with the text. In the course of sermon planning and preparation, it is easy to forget important ideas that cross one's mind in even the most casual of ruminations. Notes must be taken so that the ideas, however fleeting, are not lost. Often they are not easy to call back. When such ideas, along with notes about historical backgrounds, textual or literary insights and so forth, are written down as one goes, they become initially etched, however faintly, in one's mind. This is the first important step toward preaching the resulting sermon without notes. There is much more to do, to be sure, but this is where it most efficiently begins.
With this in mind, let me begin the illustration that will track through this entire book: the preparation of one sermon from beginning to end. This sermon was, for me, one of a series on little-known characters of the Bible, characters whose influence far outweighed their actual presence in biblical narratives. The character for this sermon is John Mark. Like almost everyone reared in the church, I knew a little about John Mark. I knew about the breakup between Paul and Barnabas over Mark; about the fact that John Mark was widely believed to be the author of the first Gospel to be written, at least our first canonical Gospel; and I accepted, over time in seminary and study, the view held by a growing number of scholars that Mark had written his Gospel not early but late— in the weeks or months after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in A.D. 70. I also had come to the view that Mark's Gospel provides the paradigm, in a sense, on which the other canonical Gospels were formed.
Beyond that, I was going to have to do some hunting. As it was, I knew I would not be working with a single text, but with several, and that the story of Mark that I would end up telling would, in fact, be constructed out of several texts scattered throughout the New Testament. I looked up John Mark in a Bible dictionary. I was surprised at how few references there are to him. I knew that in my sermon I was going to have to know these, so I took careful notes on each one.
The first reference to John Mark is in Acts 12:12. Herod, in trying to please the Jews, began to arrest and even murder some Christian leaders. James, the brother of John, was put to death with the sword, the text says. Peter, too, was arrested and held for what was to have been a public trial after Passover. The church, though, was praying, and Peter was rescued from the prison at night by an angel. He made his way, we are told, to the house of Mary, "the mother of John whose other name was Mark." The suggestion is that John Mark was still a boy, perhaps a teenage boy, at the time, but it is clear from the text's account that John Mark knew Peter. Strikingly, the last reference to John Mark in the New Testament comes at the end of 1 Peter 5:13 where the text says, "Your sister church in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings; and so does my son Mark." Since these quotations are fairly brief, I write them down on one of my note cards.
The next reference to Mark is in Acts 12:25. Barnabas had brought Saul, the new and feared convert, to Jerusalem for the first time—no doubt a fearful event for all involved. But Barnabas was vouching for Saul, now a Christian. When their visit to Jerusalem was finished, Barnabas and Saul returned to Antioch, from which they had come, taking with them, we are told, "John, whose other name was Mark." Once back in Antioch, Barnabas and Saul are set aside for missions work and quickly (it seems) sent on their way. They went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus; and, again a simple note, "And they had John also to assist them" (Acts 13:5).
Then, a few verses later, comes that single line—one that should sound ominous, but does not. Verse 13 says that "Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. John, however, left them and returned to Jerusalem." Everything else proceeds in what appears to be a well-planned fashion. The trip ends in 14:26 and 27, with Paul and Barnabas reporting back to the church in Antioch "all that God had done with them." Chapter 14 ends, then, with the note that "they stayed there with the disciples for some time." How much time we do not know.
Chapter 15 tells the story of the ordeal of the Jerusalem council in which Paul and Barnabas were deeply involved; but then, at the end of the chapter they are back home in Antioch when Paul suggests to Barnabas that it would be good for them to revisit the churches that they started on their first trip. More than likely, two to three years had gone by since that trip was completed. It is at that point that we have the most intense light thrown on John Mark, clearly the best known dimension of his story. Barnabas suggests that John Mark would like to go on their planned trip and Paul reacts with an intensity that can only be inferred by the text. "Over my dead body" would be a rough but not inaccurate translation of the Greek text. It is not difficult to sense the profound emotion on both sides, emotion that results in this breakup of two very close friends and companions. Barnabas insists that John Mark will go, and Paul insists that he will not. Barnabas makes clear that if John Mark is not allowed to go, then he will not go either. Paul, surprisingly, accepts that. They part company. Paul chooses Silas as his new partner and the text says that Barnabas and Mark sailed for Cyprus, where, more than likely, both of them— cousins we later learn—were from. The story of Acts follows Paul and Silas. From that point on for many years we know nothing of Mark.
What I am writing here are the notes that I took as I tracked through the few texts concerning Mark. I am trying to put the text's story, with quotations at appropriate points, into my own words. I want to be able to tell these pieces as a story, even though I am not quite sure yet how the story will end. However, the Bible dictionary has given me three other references for John Mark. The first is in Paul's Colossian letter. I am already starting to create what, for me, will be a time line of Mark's life. The second missionary tour, the one that went on with Silas instead of Barnabas and Mark, can probably be dated as beginning in about 49 or 50, but the Colossian letter is quite late in Paul's life. It may have been written during his first Roman imprisonment, that period of more than two years when he was "in chains" but held in a house of some kind. Most scholars put that as being from 60 to 62 or even 63, not long before his martyrdom. So at least ten years will have passed between the blowup over Mark and the Colossian letter. At the end of that letter is a completely unexpected note: "Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, as does Mark the cousin of Barnabas" (Col. 4:10). It is then followed by the telltale line: "You have received instructions—if he [Mark] comes to you, welcome him." What instructions? Mark has a reputation that the churches know very well. Is he considered untrustworthy? A deserter when the going gets rough? What? Where and how did they hear such things? Who wrote instructions to whom? And what might this person have said? I do not know— we do not know—but my notes have me trying to spell out my thoughts as I go.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Preaching Without Notes by Joseph M. Webb. Copyright © 2001 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
Why Preach Without Script or Notes?,
Chapter One Planning the Sermon Without Notes: Monday and Tuesday,
Chapter Two Creating the Sermon Outline: Wednesday,
Chapter Three Memorizing the Sermon Outline: Thursday and Friday,
Chapter Four Delivering the Sermon Without Notes: Sunday,
Appendix Working Manuscript of a Sermon Preached Without Notes: "Writing Your Own Gospel",
Notes,