For about the next 10 years I preached with a manuscript, making sure never again to lock it in my car. Thus began my journey to preaching without notes. As I gazed yearningly at the manuscript on the seat, the thought crossed my mind: “This situation would be so much better if I had any memory of what I typed on those papers.” Actually my thought was much shorter, but that was the underlying idea. This was in the days before technology that prevents such mishaps. I got out of my 1974 Dodge Dart and closed the door, locking both my keys and my manuscript inside. I had cast a few furtive glances at it on the ride there, but had no coherent memory of what I had typed on those sheets of paper.Īs I prepared to get out of the car, I saw the station wagon containing Uncle Jim and Aunt Lucy, Uncle Horace and Aunt Louise, and Uncle Bill and Aunt Catherine pull up, all of them waving cheerily at me. My manuscript, a Bible lesson drawing on the one commentary I owned, the Abingdon One Volume Commentary on the Bible, lay on the passenger seat beside me. I pulled up in the parking lot of the church at 9:20 am, in plenty of time for the 9:45 service. I wasn’t sure how the congregation would take to a female minister, and, most agitating of all, my three uncles and their wives were planning to attend. The morning I was to preach my first sermon I had several reasons for being extremely nervous. I had just graduated from college and not yet begun my seminary studies. The summer of 1977 I was the Duke summer ministry intern at the Page-Roseland Charge in rural North Carolina. McKenzie on Tuesday, OctoHow do I learn to preach without notes? So the audience is a big factor in whether or not the point gets across.Who Moved My Manuscript? The Pros and Cons of Preaching Without Notes.īy Alyce M. For example, there was a candidate for Mayor of New York City who went to a slum to give a speech, and he was completely booed off of stage. The audience is a large factor in the reception of the speech. This example is just a way to say that a person has the capability to fabricate knowledge, but ultimately if they lack the knowledge, they are unable to effectively convince the audience. Socrates pointed out that one must need concrete knowledge and facts in order to prove a person otherwise. *However, in the case of Gorgias versus Socrates, Gorgias thought that rhetoric alone was enough to convince a crowd that he was a doctor. Speeches need to be concise and quick no citations are used in speeches, so unless there is fact-checking, a person could be lying or fabricating information and can get the information across. One person could project information different than another person reading the same information. The speech could be biased towards the person whose reading it. They could be better or worse if explaining it themselves in real life. We are not seeing a person at their actual potential, only something staged after many practices (or few practices). Speeches are most of the time staged, practiced. Speeches give us two mediums through which we receive information: a visual way through the person’s body language and presence on the podium, and also an auditory way through their inflection, content, etc.Ī person can get an emotional point across more easily instead of on paper. They’re a great way to present all of the information in a concise, summed-up way. Speeches allow a person to give their own personal bias towards a subject, giving us their perspective towards certain topics.
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