Writing a Manuscript for the Ear

Losing the map. Ideally, though it is useful to have a discipline of manuscript preparation, it is best not to use a manuscript at all in the actual act of preaching. But how do we move from a manuscript to the “planned spontaneity” of the voice? To begin with, don’t memorize the manuscript. Memorization sets up the false notion that the “manuscript” is the sermon. If the oral/aural event is the sermon, and we subscribe to the Spirit’s activity in the act of preaching, then the manuscript is rather more like Wendell Berry’s experience of having lost a beloved map in the wilderness: the map, he realizes, was never the thing itself, but only markings recalling a process and a journey.³ The sermon, like Berry’s experience of the wilderness, is the feeling of being on holy ground. Everything else fades into the background in the hour of proclamation.

What we are talking about here is not so much whether one uses a manuscript or not, but instead we are aiming for a shift in our own sense of what constitutes the sermon, between the words we have labored over and the actual event of preaching itself. As it turns out, that shift is more of a “both/and” than an “either/or”—the manuscript should be a faithful reminiscence of a journey to a particular place, the hour of worship; but it should not displace the event of proclamation that it is designed to serve.

If this is the case, and you are not to “lose the manuscript,” what, then, are we to do? Practically, the alternative to either “losing” the manuscript or “memorizing” it is to internalize the major features of the manuscript: moves, images, analogies, narrative structure. Get to know the map so well that you “lose” the map in the event of being in the place of proclamation. Get to know the map in such a personal, even physical, way that the center of gravity in your own experience of the sermon begins to shift from manuscript to the moment of proclamation. Get to the point where you’re anticipating the Word that is being sent ahead of you, the preacher. Get to the point where you, too, anticipate a Word that is to be heard—a Word that you do not know.

Ultimately, whether you enter the preaching moment with a manuscript or without one, the act of crafting a manuscript is a discipline worthy of sustaining. As a discipline, it reminds us that we are stewards of Christian language, word by word. But in the end, what we say in the sermon is in service of the ear that listens for a Word from the Lord: “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17, NRSV)—a Word that will surprise us into worship.

1. G. Robert Jacks, Just Say the Word: Writing for the Ear (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996) and Getting the Word Across: Speech Communication for Pastors and Lay Leaders (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996).

2. For an example of this, see Jacks' Just Say the Word, 164-73.

3. Wendell Berry, The Unforseen Wilderness: Kentucky's Red River Gorge (Emeryville: Shoemaker and Hoard, 1991), 110-11.