A course of lectures on preaching by RL Dabney (Available from Amazon or free here)
This week Dabney teaches us about different modes of preparation for preaching.
Firstly Dabney discusses preaching from a full manuscript. Although he suggests that reading from a manuscript is not preaching, he does admit that some preachers can use a full manuscript and have utterance that 'really has the quality of extempore eloquence.'
Secondly Dabney looks at the practice of writing out a full manuscript and committing it to memory. He does not recommended it either.
Thirdly Dabney examines extempore preaching, which is 'a discourse in which the thought has been perfectly prearranged, but the words, except in cardinal propositions, are left to the free suggestions of the moment.' Extempore preaching is Dabney's preferred method and so he outlines:
(i) advantages to it;
(ii) obstacles to it;
(iii) means by which it may be acquired.
I have to agree with Dabney that reading out a full manuscript is not good preaching: 'Reading a manuscript to the people can never, with any justice, be termed preaching. Even if the matter and style are rhetorical, the action cannot be, but it is almost impossible that the structure either of thought or language should be such, when the invention is performed in solitude and at the writing-desk. Some men of powerful genius have indeed, by long practice, acquired the talent of so representing to themselves the circumstances of public discourse, while engaged in solitary composition, as almost to overcome this obstacle ; they do indeed write as an orator should speak. But these are the exceptions. In the delivery of the sermon there can be no exception in favour of the mere reader. How can he whose eyes are fixed upon the paper before him, who performs the mechanical task of reciting the very words inscribed upon it, have the inflections, the emphasis, the look, the gesture, the flexibility, the fire, of oratorical action? Mere reading, then, should be sternly banished from the pulpit, except in those rare cases in which the didactic purpose supersedes the rhetorical, and exact verbal accuracy is more essential than eloquence.'
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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