But no matter who you are — even in the smaller church — people will never tell you to take breaks. Never. If they do tell you to take breaks they'll invite you to their beach home or mountain home and then they'll want to come with you and it its not a vacation. You need a vacation after that.
Preaching: When you're preparing your message, do you at any point write a manuscript? Then when you preach, what do you have with you?
Young: Yes. When I am meeting with the Creative Team we are writing it out word for word. We go through sentence by sentence; we don't just talk in concepts. We talk in concepts first but then on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday we're doing exact transition. Exact stuff.
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For example, I started off with the story of the Doberman being tethered to the bench and smashing the cars and — this was four or five months ago. Then I stopped and made my transition: "Every person hearing my voice is more like that Doberman than you care to admit. We're all leashed up to unforgiveness and it's causing all this collateral damage in our lives. Who is holding the leash?" Do you know why I know that? Because I memorized it. We crafted that transition. Messages are all about transitions.
We go through it word for word. It'll end up being eight to ten pages. I don't memorize it. Then after I've gone through it once again and corrected everything, I put it into a mind map, a message map. A mind map is on one legal page. Your big idea is in the middle. You start with the introduction and you move through counter clockwise. I color different key words. Then I read the mind map — I read it on Saturday and read it and read it and write a couple of notes and then I put the mind map down and I'll walk on stage and do it. Now, I will have with me in my Bible the scripture verses typed out — I don't flip back and forth in the Bible. It takes too much time. There are too many translations out there. And we always view a verse usually on PowerPoint.
Do I have anything written down up there? I'll have an outline. My main points are in the Bible. Sometimes I look at them, sometimes I don't. But that's all I have to say. Because the creative team worked on it, because I've told it and spoken into the Dictaphone, and we've gone over and over and over it and because we've corrected it all and we've read the mind map — it's just in me. But I do that discipline of writing it down. Every word. Creativity emerges from order. Order is not emerged from creativity. That's again a postmodern view. You've got to do the work, the hard work, and then as the Holy Spirit leads — because I know the message so well as the Holy Spirit leads I can chase a quick rabbit and come back as He leads.