I was listening this morning to a recording of Sinclair Ferguson speaking at SEBTS chapel and he said:
“I remember my daughter came in with enthusiasm one Sunday night.
'Dad, I can teach you to preach in a way that people would take notes of your sermon. Everybody will take notes of your sermon.'
'Tell me how.'
'It is easy. I have noticed that every time you say "there are three things you need to understand" or "three things here that you need to put into practice," the women are diving into their purses them men are scraping around for a piece of paper because as long as you can reduce it to a simple number so that they can say “now I’ve got it!”'
Sinclair then commented: “We are suckers to the end.”
He then continued to the pastors:
"And we are suckers too- 'Eight ways to improve your preaching,' 'A single technique that will make you a great preacher,' 'How to preach to the postmodern world'...
Never mind the Holy Ghost.
Never mind the text of Scripture.
You see a thousand different ways that we fall prey to this."
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3 comments:
"the women are diving into their purses them men are scraping around for a piece of paper because as long as you can reduce it to a simple number so that they can say “now I’ve got it!”
I agree that not everything can be simplified to a 3-step process but what is so horrible about people wanting to write notes down and leave with the ability to say "now I get it". Isn't that why we preach? So that people "get it"?
By the way... great discussion yesterday at the CPN. Thanks for being such a great facilitator Doug!
--Chris.
Funny you should ask....
He was not coming down on note taking in this excerpt, he was coming down on the idea that Christianity can be reduced to a number of steps. This really was helpful to me as I was contemplating Ephesians and Paul is telling the Ephesians to put off their old selves and put on the new. The means by which you do this is not through "3 easy steps to peace," but through knowing who you are in Christ.
To the note taking question however, I do know that Sinclair follows in Martyn Lloyd Jones shadow in being against it. The reason Jones was against it was that he said that a sermon's main purpose was not to simply convey information. If that was its purpose then we could just stay home and read books. What happens in a sermon, is that the Holy Spirit moves through the preaching of the Word and works its way through the congregation, affecting hearts and minds. Note taking, he feared, would hinder the Spirit's ability to do that because the congregant would be more concerned about writing down notes and getting each point down than he/she would in sitting at the feet of God, as it were, and allowing God to do a work through the Word.
I don't know if I've explained it well, but I meditated over this for some time and have come to agree with them. I used to do outlines in my bulletins, but now I may simply put a quote or two- but I would rather my people simply listen and receive than worry about jotting every little thing down.
-Doug
We do the same at Bedrock. We don't provide outlines on the bulletin but we do provide the back of the bulletin with space to write down any sort of note that you may want. I guess it comes back to different styles of learning. Some are auditory, some visual, and some kinesthetic. Some people prefer having some sort of "hands on" interaction that would accompany the hearing. I find an interesting parallel between this and journaling. If I am going to have a devotional time during the day and ask God to speak to me through His word and through prayer than I should have something there ready to write it down, expecting Him to speak. So, as God speaks to me through hearing His word preached then I like having something there to write on. When He speaks it is important enough to write down. I'm not concerned about an outline as some sort of memory tool and write down what a preacher might say but I am expecting God to speak and I want to take note of that.
I hope that makes some sort of sense. This is an interesting topic and one that I have never put a lot of thought into.
--Chris.
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