THE PREACHER'S TECHNIQUE
Now here there inevitably arises the question of the relative merits of read and spoken sermons. This is an old debate and it is not necessary to rehearse all the "pros" and "cons." Let me rather make one or two general suggestions on the main issue, and then draw attention to three specific points which have been singularly overlooked.
You will be well advised, whichever method of delivery you are proposing to adopt, to begin by writing out your sermons fully. During the first ten years of your ministry—and perhaps over a much longer period than that—there is no substitute for this essential discipline. It will safeguard your work against diffuseness, ambiguity and redundance. It will make for clarity of thought and perspicuity of style. Therefore establish it as a rule that one of your two sermons each week—some would go further and say both—shall be, not merely drafted, but wrought out in full from beginning to end.
But having your sermon thus completely written, what are you to do with it? Are you to take the manuscript into the pulpit and read it word for word? That this method has manifest advantages is not to be denied. Thus, for example, it ensures that the balanced presentation of a subject, for which the preacher has laboured in his study, shall not be lost. Moreover, it defends a helpless congregation from the worst evils of extemporaneous padding and prolixity! It defends the preacher from the nightmare experience of floundering in the morass, and fumbling in vain for the
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