A news item crossed my desk recently about a long-time friend who had spoken at a seminary and counseled these young and future pastors never to carry notes into the pulpit. "Immerse yourself in the message," he said. "Look the people in the eye, and connect with them."

It was not bad advice. My friend and I graduated in the same seminary class, and together we have eighty-plus years of experience in the pulpit, and we probably agree on the business of trying to preach without notes. Where we disagree is that I don't think it's the right counsel for everyone.

Most of the sermons I've heard from others and almost all the messages I've preached over these four decades could well have been presented without notes, but not all of them. A few have been deep, some have been highly technical, several have heavily quoted authors and authorities, and more than one or two have relied on fine points of doctrine that needed to be stated just so. In every case, the speakers took notes into the pulpit and used them effectively. To require these messengers of the Lord to leave all notes behind puts an unfair and unnecessary burden on them.

Or so I think. I could be wrong. And that's my point. My friend was giving his opinion; this is mine. His listeners and my readers are free to consider both and make up their minds, no matter how persuasively or not my friend and I make our case.

Preachers are all different. They have different personalities and a multitude of styles. They preach various types of sermons. And their churches are as diverse as they are. They do not all have the same needs.

Furthermore, sometimes I'm different. I don't always need the same thing I did last week. My preaching changes. I grow, I learn, I move, I adapt. One piece of advice hardly fits even me, much less all preachers everywhere forever and ever, amen.

That's not to say God's Word does not give excellent and lasting instruction to those of us who dare to preach. One evidence of the inspiration of God's Word is its applicability, that it fits all of us all the time. What else in our world can we say that about?

But, interestingly enough, God resisted the temptation, as though He ever was tempted, to get too specific about the task of sermon building, construction, and delivery. In Jesus's day, we are told, the speaker sat while his congregation stood. That being the custom of the day, we would expect somewhere in the Bible to find instructions on how to sit, where to sit (in front, the middle, off to one side), how high to sit (elevated, lower, eye level), when to stand, and how long people could stand before needing time to rest. But, we give thanks, the Bible is silent on this subject.

Nowhere in the Word are we told whether the preacher should speak loudly or softly, conversationally or oratorically, fast or slow, whether to tell stories or stick to the precepts, to wear a suit and wingtips or a sweatshirt with sneakers, insert quotes from others or stick to one's own material, reuse sugar sticks or stay current, borrow outlines or make up your own, use notes or not, alliteration or not, to print fill-in-the-blank outlines in the worship bulletins, project the sermon points on the media screen, or even whether a sermon has to have points. How, I ask, tongue firmly planted in cheek, could a loving God have allowed these oversights in His eternal Word?