The Minister’s Workshop: Is a Read Sermon a Dead Sermon?

Each of the three methods of sermon delivery has had effective users; yet one is the most desirable …

To be good, a sermon must not only have fine content but also be delivered effectively. It isn’t enough for the preacher to have something important to say: he must be able to say it in a way that compels attention. In other words, he must be able to communicate his message. The late Charles R. Brown, at one time dean of the Yale University Divinity School and one of the greatest American preachers of his day, put the matter aptly:

Here in the delivery of your sermon the nourishment which you have brought for a hungry congregation is either eaten with satisfaction, relish, and resultant strength, or it is left on the plate as a bit of cold victuals, useless and repellent. Take heed, therefore, how you deliver! [The Art of Preaching, p. 155].

Books on preaching usually list three chief methods of delivering a sermon—reading from a full manuscript, using only an outline or notes, and dispensing with manuscript altogether. There can be no doubt that each of these methods has had its effective users. Any list of the great preachers of the Christian Church would have to include Jonathan Edwards of eighteenth-century America, Phillips Brooks of nineteenth-century America, Thomas Chalmers of nineteenth-century Scotland, and Herbert H. Farmer of twentieth-century England: and all these read their manuscripts closely. So a read sermon is not necessarily a dead sermon. The fact remains, however, that the most desirable—because the most effective—way to preach is to dispense with manuscript entirely and speak freely with no notes.

The reason for this is quite clear. Any manuscript, even a partial one, is a non-conducting medium for communicating with a congregation; it is a barrier to effective communication. The preacher who can deliver his sermon without referring to a paper, who can look his congregation in the face, has eye contact that will give him a close rapport with his hearers not possible otherwise.

There can be no doubt that congregations prefer their preachers to be as free from manuscript as possible. Charles R. Brown in his autobiography describes his early efforts as a young minister to preach without notes, a practice in which he came to achieve great ease and effectiveness. He always took long passages of Scripture as his text so as not to run out of material too soon—on the principle once laid down by John McNeill: “When pursued by one Scripture passage, flee to another.” One Sunday evening, however, Brown ran completely out of ideas after preaching for only eleven minutes. Having no more to say, he stopped abruptly, announced the closing hymn, and pronounced the benediction. Some of his church officers, thinking that their minister must have suddenly felt ill, came up to him to express their sympathy. Next day, however, Brown plucked up courage to go to his leading layman and tell him the truth. This layman, a trial lawyer by profession, replied: “Keep right on, Parson! We would rather have eleven minutes of this sort of preaching than half an hour of the other. I would never risk a case in court by taking along a carefully prepared manuscript to be read to the jury. You are appealing for much more important verdicts than it has ever been my lot to secure. Keep your eye on the jury and talk right at them” (My Own Yesterdays, pp. 65, 66).

Not only do congregations prefer manuscript-free preaching; at least some preachers who have read their sermons have wondered whether they would not have done better by preaching without paper. For example, Jonathan Edwards in later life regretted his practice of reading sermons and sought greater freedom from manuscript. John Daniel Jones, who was minister of Richmond Hill Congregational Church of Bournemouth, England, and one of the most distinguished British preachers during the first half of this century wrote all his sermons and read them very well. But when, after retiring from the active pastorate, he came to write his autobiography, he said this: “If a man can dispense with manuscript and look the people in the face, that is the most effective style of preaching (Threescore Years and Ten, p. 27).

How can a preacher acquire freedom from dependence on a manuscript? First, he should write out his sermons in full—more than once if possible. Such exceptionally gifted preachers as Arthur J. Gossip and Frederick W. Norwood used no manuscript in their preaching and did not even write out their sermons until after they had been preached. But for any preacher not so gifted as these pulpit masters, writing sermons in full is desirable and even necessary, partly to clarify his thought, partly to determine the length of the sermon, and partly to fix the sermon in his mind.

Second, he should develop his sermonic ideas in such a way that it is easy to follow them—i.e. simply, clearly, and logically. Some famous preachers have organized their sermons under three “heads” or points; Alexander Maclaren of Manchester and James Black of Edinburgh are outstanding examples of preachers who have thus “fed their flock with a three-pronged fork.” But whether this plan is adopted or not, every sermon should have clear, orderly, logical development. James S. Stewart of Edinburgh, who himself preaches without notes, says this:

It should be quite possible for the preacher, without the stiltedness of mechanized memorizing, to get a sure grip and clear conspectus of his own sermon, provided that certain conditions have been observed in the writing of it. These conditions are clarity of logical structure; well-defined divisions and subdivisions; exclusion of irrelevances; short paragraphs, with a single clear-cut thought in each, not long unbroken stretches where a dozen ideas jostle; balance and progress and development; with one or two strong and vivid illustrations marking out the track. The point is that freedom of delivery will tend to vary in direct proportion to accuracy of construction. If you can fashion a sermon which stands out clearly in all its parts before your mind, the tyranny of the manuscript is broken [Heralds of God, pp. 181, 182],

Third, the preacher should go over his manuscript several times before the sermon is due for delivery. If the sermon has been clearly thought-out and logically developed, imprinting it on the preacher’s mind should not require too much study. As long as he gets the main ideas and divisions clearly before him, he can leave to the inspiration of the moment the exact words with which to clothe his ideas. In this way, he may have to sacrifice literary finish and elegance; but he will be more than compensated for this loss in the face-to-face directness and close rapport he will have with his congregation. Having mastered the sermon, the preacher will sleep over it on Saturday night; and if he does, the congregation will be unlikely to sleep over it on Sunday morning.—The Rev. NORMAN V. HOPE, professor of church history, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

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