Module 5: Preaching Without Notes

[Music] welcome to module five a practical preaching honestly this is probably the one that I'm most excited about and most looking forward for you because this module we're talking about how to preach without using notes now you can use these advice to use fewer notes but you can actually preach without using any notes and I mean this is a personal thing for me because I always kind of thought that preaching without notes could only happen if you were super experienced and it only happened when you got really good and you could just think of things off the top of your head and I was like man it's gonna take me forever to get there and especially if I'm gonna you know more a theological deep passage or there's gotta be I'm talking about a topic that needs more explanation or stories like how am I gonna actually be able to preach without notes and here's what I would say as we begin this module that we're not saying preaching without notes or with minimal notes is the best way or it is the only way obviously different people have different styles and God has used different people and different styles throughout history to communicate his truth but I think generally the the reality of the situation is this the less you have to look down at your notes and the more you can look out and connect with your people the more effective it's going to be particularly in a day and age in which we live today where people crave authenticity they crave just people being real and you can be real and authentic reading your notes but it doesn't come across that way as if you're having a conversation with someone so I think preaching without notes or preaching with minimal notes is even more important in the day and way today an age in which we live today and I want you to let you know as you listening to this maybe you're a complete manuscript person maybe you don't use a manuscript but you use a ton of notes and you're thinking there's no way I will be able to ever get to a place where I'm not using any notes I want to tell you you can because I was able to do it so let me give you a little bit of backstory on my preaching journey about six months ago I began to set out to preach with no notes now what I was doing up into that point at New City Church and any time I communicated somewhere when I was preaching I used about five pages of notes so I used Google Docs I have an iPad and so I would do it horizontal and two columns each and I would literally have about 75 to 80 of what I was going to say on with my notes in front of me pretty much everything I was going to say except my stories were in my notes so I didn't necessarily stare and read him the whole time but they were all there and I begin to get frustrated because there are times where I didn't even have to look at my notes but because they were there I kept finding myself looking at them and not trusting myself at all just to be able to preach and not look down as much and so I went from using five ish pages of notes to no notes at all in six months now I'm not going to say that's your story and you know people can go different lengths of time in order to get you know to however many notes that you may use to using no notes I'm not trying to say you should compare your journey to mine so I'll have to say I want you to know that you can actually do this and if you would have told me at the beginning of my six-month journey from using five ish pages of notes to no notes if I would have been able to do it I wouldn't have a minute I would not have believed you and so I want to do is I want to help give you six tips that I follow that were helpful for me that you can also implement to help you significantly minimize the amount of notes that you do and hopefully even maybe help you be able to preach with no notes at all so here they are here here's the point number one and this may be self-explanatory but we have to actually believe this so we actually have to do this and that's this that you have to force yourself to take every step you have to force yourself to take every step and what do I mean by step I mean that every time you reduce your notes it's never gonna be easy it's never gonna feel comfortable it's gonna freak you out a little bit but you have to force yourself to do it so what happened with my kind of journey from five ish notes to no notes I went from five ish notes to three ish pages of notes and had to force myself to take that step and then once I got comfortable with that I went from three ish pages to about a page of notes and then eventually I went from a page of notes to no notes at all and every time I reduce the amount of notes that I brought up with me on stage it was nerve-racking it was scary and I was worried that I was gonna mess up or it was gonna be super short or is gonna be awkward or I was gonna forget stuff we just got to know every time we say okay I'm going to take less notes with me you have to force yourself to do it the only way to do it is to make yourself do it and then you'll find that it's not as much it's not as hard not as difficult as you think now if you go from like my example from five pay is five pages of notes to zero I wouldn't recommend that so you want to take steps you don't want to do it all at once but you just have to know that you're gonna have to force yourself to take every step but you can actually do it so that's point number one force yourself take every step point number two is that you should use the same outline every week we use the outline that we talked about in this course I used that outline for pretty much all of my preaching nowadays and when you use the same outline every week it begins to help you understand your message and your sermon better because you know the flow of it because here's the thing if you don't use a outline if you don't structure your messages in a similar way every week it becomes really hard to actually know where you're going without looking at your notes and so if you used a similar outline every single week you'll be able to get comfortable with that outline and you'll be able to anticipate the flow and the structure of your message even if you get confused even if you lose your spot if you're familiar with the flow of your message with the outline that you use it makes it possible for you to use less notes and then even possible to use no notes at all so force your stuff yourself to take every step and use the same outline every week so that you're comfortable and you're familiar with the flow of your message here's point number three that you can use more slides on your screen so this is one of those big big ways that I was able to go from five ish pages of notes to now no moat no notes at all is that I actually used a lot more slides on my screen so whether you have projectors or TV or so however you use to project your your notes and your messages and your lyrics you can actually use more slides now as a side tip you never want to put more than one point on your slot on your screens per slide because what happens is any time something pops up on a screen people read everything on the screen before they focus back on the person who's speaking so if you put multiple notes on the screen at once people are going to be reading all of that and not listening to you so you can have multiple slides just do one slide one screen or one note per slide and you can use that at help as your outline so you don't actually have to memorize your whole message you just got to have these teaching points and here's the thing you could have those same notes in front of you but instead of looking down you're looking out and now of course here's the deal with this this does depend a little bit on the space in which you are sitting in or which you are preaching if you don't have slides this one if you don't have screens rather this won't be as helpful but if you have a screen next to you that you can look to if you have a confidence mater in your space in front of you or in the back of your auditorium looking at that or glancing at that as opposed to glancing down in your notes makes a really big difference and so you can add more slides to your screens and use those as reminders for what you're supposed to talk about or what you want to say instead of trying to remember every little thing you have to say and memorizing your message you can use your screens as your notes and it doesn't look like you're actually using notes at all again it aloud allows you to keep looking up at there extra people instead of looking down and just a side note as well with this is that there may be things like stories or illustrations that you want to use but you don't want to put them on the screens because it that would kind of defeat the purpose and that would look really weird so what you can also do - again this kind of works better if you have confidence monitors but if you have a space that this allows as you can give yourself notes on your screens about hey say a story here without actually putting it on the screen that everybody sees and regardless if you do that or not here's what you just need to know it's okay to use a lot of slides as long as you only use one slide per screen and you can use those slides to help you walk you through your message as opposed to looking at notes now of course on those slides that does mean that you're not going to have all your notes up there you have to know what you're actually going to say but it's a great way to not have to look down at all instead of just looking out and looking at the same screen or the same slide that everyone else is looking at and it doesn't force you to look down at your notes so point number three use more slides it'll help you use less notes here's point number four this one may seem obvious but it's vitally important and that's this that you have to commit to putting in the work to use less notes you have to commit to putting in the work if you want to use no notes at all again I used to think that the better you got at preaching you just you just didn't need to use as many notes because you just knew what you're going to say and you can kind of memorize things better and here's the deal your skill and preaching does get better the more you preach but what I found is that for me to actually not use any notes at all I have to do a lot more work to make it possible now I would say it's vitally important if you're a pastor or one of the biggest things that you do is preach and so it's a work worth putting in the work but you have to know there no like I'm just gonna get good at this one day and that's when I when I won't use any notes no you got to force yourself to take the steps then you have to force yourself to put in the notes again what even when you're using screens you have points on your screens but you need to know what you're going to say about that point you no longer can look down to remind yourself you have to remember it and work on understanding your message so I'm just gonna be honest it does take more work as you do it more you do get used to it more but if you want to preach with minimal notes or as I as as I would try to encourage with no notes at all you have to be able to be willing to put in the work it won't just happen just because you've been preaching a long long time so you gotta remember put in the work and point number five here's a big one when it comes to using minimal notes or no notes at all and that is this that you have to be okay with forgetting things you have to be okay with saying oh I was gonna make this point or I really wanted to say this and I forgot here's the good thing right nobody knows what you were actually going to say and so if you forget something nobody knows right nobody actually knows you're gonna forget something and you know this to be true right you beat yourself up over this but when you hear other people preach or communicate and they tell you yeah I forgot to say this or that you don't think anything of it because you also didn't know that they forgot so it is okay to forget things we just have to be okay with forgetting things and here's the reality situation as well that if you forget something it probably wasn't that big a deal to begin with now I want to be honest it doesn't mean that it's okay to forget it or that you shouldn't you know kind of be upset in some ways about or you couldn't be bummed let's say about it and sometimes you will forget a major point that you're like man I why did I forget that it was it really would have tied things together I really would have made more sense again one of the let you know nobody else knows that you forgot it and I would say this too that I think it is worth the trade-off of forgetting some things even if we think they're very important for us to be able to connect better with the people that we were speaking to you know it's funny in our context at new city church the first few weeks that I started not using any notes at all people actually unsolicited without me asking without me doing anything would come up and I got I actually got a few emails and personal conversations with people of saying I've noticed that you're not using any notes I really appreciate that I really connect with you better without you with with you not looking down and so I would just say this that it is okay to forget things in order to connect with your people that are again the day and age in which we live today people crave that connection they want to see the genuineness they want to see that you believe what you're going to say and listen to me writing notes and reading them does not mean you don't believe it and does not mean you're any less genuine but it can come across that way so we've got to be willing to put in the notes and we've got to be okay to forget things and I would say that trade-off of forgetting things that's worth it to help you connect with people better and this is pointing that release to point number six the final point that we're giving at how you can preach with no notes is that you just have to learn to trust yourself you have to learn your to trust yourself which is again why you have to force yourself to take every step but you've got to be okay with forgetting things you've got to be okay with hey I see this point I'm gonna talk about this for a little bit now the skill of preaching without notes does develop over time as you get more comfortable without notes you begin what you become more relaxed and more easy to kind of explain things without having to remind yourself with notes and looking down all the time but you just have to learn or trust yourself and the only way to trust yourself is to make yourself actually do it it's okay to forget things it's okay to ramble every once in a while because maybe you're thinking well I need my notes because if not I'm gonna ramble well that that is that matters why you should try it we should try not to ramble but I wouldn't even say that trade-off is worth it to connect with people better but you've got to learn to trust yourself you know what's funny every time I reduce the amount of notes that I had I thought that my sermons were gonna be like 15 or 20 minutes long and actually that hasn't been the case at all in fact now I find myself going longer if I'm not careful why because I'm trusting myself better now when we say trust ourself we don't mean don't prepare we don't mean don't prep your sermon we don't mean just kind of winging it not at all we mean put in the hard work of developing a great sermon of working towards using no notes in your sermon but then trust yourself with the end result knowing it's going to be okay to forget things and so those are some tips to preach without notes I'll say them real quick again really quick number one force yourself to take every step it's not going to be easy but you can do it number two use the same outline every week that'll help you remember the flow of your message number three use more slides on your screens so you can look up instead of looking down number four commit to putting in the work it's not going to be easy I spend more time on my sermons now than I did when I didn't when I used notes before but it is so worth it number five be okay with forgetting things you will forget things it will be okay and number six learn to trust yourself

Channel: Practical Church Planting

Views: 5,473

Rating: 4.9230771 out of 5

Keywords: preaching, without notes, preach by memory, become a better preacher, preach better sermons, how to preach, preaching without notes, practical, church, planting, plant, ministry, communication

Id: 2LPFCiOMHJg

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 15 2019