My Sermon Notes

Well, since Andrew asked me to post these, and since Michael referred to Scot McKnight's post about the use of notes in preaching, here they are - my sermon notes.

Tim Keller's notes, which are much more interesting, they are not!

These are my notes from last Sunday. The only things I changed since preaching are the title (!), clarifying a reference or two, and shrinking the font on the footnotes. Everything else is the same. If you heard this sermon, you'll see for yourself how closely the sermon matches the notes in some places and where minor deviations from the notes (for better or for worse) took place.

These notes are typical for me, though sometimes they are longer or shorter. I think what I tend to do is rely on the notes for direct quotations and details in illustrations, while delivering most of the explanatory comments and exhortation and application comments extemporaneously as I speak (though most of this is also thought through in advance).

I can certainly see the value of not using notes. I've tried preaching without them, but am more comfortable with them. More power to those who can do this consistently. But for myself, preparing new sermons every week is more than enough work without the added time and effort of memorizing quotations and such. (Though I usually do have the outline memorized and rely heavily on what I remember from studying the text in my explanations.)