WHY I GAVE UP SERMON MANUSCRIPTS [M, 9-18-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—WHY I GAVE UP SERMON MANUSCRIPTS [M, 9-18-23]

 

It was Sept. 13, 1956, my first Sunday preaching on The Chrisney, IN Circuit. I was a nineteen-year-old university sophomore. It was a hot Sunday morning. All the windows of Crossroads Methodist Church, the first of my 3 preaching stops that morning, were open.  A wasp, curious to learn what a nineteen-year-old university sophomore could know about faith--enough to preach about it, in his very first sermon--came through a window and settled down on my sermon notes to read. I was a farm boy before I was a preacher. Farm boys don’t pamper wasps. I snatched up the song book, lying on the lower side part of the pulpit top, beside the lectern part, and promptly smashed wasp guts all over my sermon outline. It got an approving laugh from the congregation, but made the rest of the sermon a bit uncertain.

That should have been enough, to know that I should be a noteless preacher. But I took Speech 101 in my freshman year. I knew all about using Roman numerals and Capital Letters and Arabic numbers just right to create a beautiful form on the page. Should one not use a college education?

 

I

  A  

    1

      a

      b

II

   Etc.

I did become more streamlined as time went by, but I still used an outline, often just a list of words, in order, as reminders.

Until I graduated and preached full-time on the Sosberry Circuit while my new wife finished up at IU. I would be matriculating at Perkins School of Theology, at Southern Methodist U, after that year, so I thought I should learn to preach from a manuscript. Solsberry was my second preaching stop on Sunday morning, with Walkers Chapel third. First to get the benefit of my new preaching style was Greene Couty Chapel. I even typed my sermon on expensive onion skin paper, just to show God that I was serious.

It was June. A hot day. The windows were open. No, not a wasp this time. A bird flew in. And up. Flew around in circles. Too high to escape through the open windows at a lower level, because it was a birdbrain that did not know enough to come down to window level. The heads of the entire congregation went round and round in unison. Until the bird, in apparent disgust at my simplistic theology, shat nosily and mightily all over my onionskin sermon.

I was recalling these events with Helen, and she said, “If you had another story like those, you could write them as a column for CIW.”

[Obviously she has listened to sermons long enough to know such things should have 3 points.] I can’t think of another manuscript-fouling episode of my own, so I’ll tell one that is part of The Great American Sermon Illustration Book…

The young preacher wrote out a sermon on Adam and Eve. The windows were open—they always are in these stories—and a wind blew in and whisked a page off the pulpit and out an open window on the other side. [Air conditioned sanctuaries are obviating an entire genre of sermon mishaps.] The young preacher had glanced up—one of those bird-pecking-at-seeds glances that manuscript readers do--so didn’t notice. He looked back down and continued to read. “Then Adam said to Eve…” but the next page was missing… “Adam said to Eve…” He was desperately looking through his manuscript… “Adam said to Eve…” and he muttered, “There seems to be a leaf missing…”

Anyway, I gave up using even notes to preach.

John Robert McFarland