The Talking the Walk Blog has an interesting post that seeks to derive help for preachers from an interview with Denzel Washington.

Denzel answers why he did a particular hand movement in a movie by saying:

Of course…it’s just rhythm. Acting is like music. You improvise. It’s like jazz. There is no rhyme or reason to it. It’s not a plan. I just did it. It’s a rhythm. Stanislavsky said that you cut 90%. You do all your research; and you prepare, and then you let it rip. And that’s how it is. You practice the music, you know, and then you just play it.

Now thinking about preaching, we have many tools for preparing. We exegete the text. We look at the text historically, linguistically, and theologically. We prepare by putting together a good outline and then add some good stories and illustrations. You prepare by practicing, but then when it is time to preach, Denzel encourages us preachers to just “let it rip.”

Trust the Holy Spirit, trust your preparation, and then “let it rip.”

The fundamental aspect of the memory system is to connect the thing you want to remember to your brain in a solid fashion. Tony Buzan, in his book Use Your Perfect Memory cites 2 fundamental principles that will aid you in your memory work. In our next post, we will look at the features. All of this is in anticipation of applying it to the problem of preaching without notes.

Imagination in Memory

To remember something we need to connect the thing we want to remember to our brain. There are two fundamental principles to doing that. The first is to use imagination. Perhaps the biggest problem with many who seek to remember things is that they do not make use of their imagination.

We often try to memorize dry facts or unconnected data. In addition, much of our preaching is dry and unconnected to reality because it does not make use of the imaginative abilities of the preacher, neither does it evoke the imagination of the hearer.

How does one use the imagination in preaching and memory? Well, first one can look at the text imaginatively. A good way into this is to look at it through all of your senses. I would encourage you to read my post on sensory exegesis. Taste what is happening in the text, listen to it, touch it, and smell it. Run to the father with the prodigal son. Do you feel the anticipation in the son? Do you feel the fear and hope mingled together? Do you feel the hope increase as he sees his father run to him? Do you smell the stink of the pig pen on the prodigal’s body? All of these things will bind the features of the sermon to our mind as preachers and to the mind of the congregants.

Association in Memory

The next principle of memory is association. In order to remember something, we connect it to something that we already remember in our brain.

Another mistake of those who seek to memorize things is to attempt to just memorize things unconnected. We need to first of all understand the structure of that which we are to memorize and then connect it to some structure that we already know or understand.

Preachers can use this feature by first of all understanding the structure of the sermon. And then applying that structure to something that is known in our minds. Let us say that you are attempting to memorize the historical facts behind a biblical text. What you might do is seek a parallel situation in the world that mirrors it.

Preachers often make use of this aspect of memory in illustrations. We seek to connect the Bible story to the minds of the hearers (and their memories) by comparing it to something that is in the lived experience of the hearers.

Conclusion

Good sermons make use of the two principles of memory. In addition, anything that makes use of the principles will be easier to remember for the preacher and the hearer.

A quick way to use what we have learned here is to take your main sermonic point, and every major sub point and be sure to use imagination and association in your presentation of it.

Remember those infomercials about “MEGA-MEMORY?” Kevin Trudeau wrote spoke about learning some techniques to strengthen one’s memory. After seeing the thing for years, I finally purchased the system off of ebay for a big reduction in cost.

After working through the system, I realized that while Trudeau’s claims were extravagant at times, his system did actually work to improve your memory. I then researched and saw that these memory techniques were used by the ancients to memorize even long speeches. In addition, I saw that the techniques that Trudeau spoke of in cheap book form by other authors. One that I particularly like is by Tony Buzan. In the next couple of weeks we will look at these memory techniques specifically applying them to preaching in general and preaching without notes in particular.

You might want to purchase a memory book like Use Your Perfect Memory or even the book form of Kevin Trudeu’s system that introduced me to memory techniques.

Richard S. Storrs second lecture in the book entitled Preaching Without Notes: A Series of Lectures describes some specific conditions for success in preaching without notes. These are as follows:

1. Physical vigor kept at its highest attainable point. – The preacher must be as healthy as possible if one is to preach effectively without notes.
2. Keep your mind in a state of habitual activity, alertness, and energy. – This will help the preacher grasp subjects easier. Just as you keep your body active, we should keep our mind active. Storrs suggests reading a lot of material. And the kind of reading should be active, studious, and rapid. In addition, one should read widely. Also, Storrs suggests conversations with people. Finally, one should be active in many endevors.
3. Be careful that the plan of your sermon is simple, natural, progressive, easily mastered, and is thoroughly embedded in your mind. – Here the preacher must master the general plan of the sermon. And this general plan must be simple and easily mastered. Here we are looking at the sermon from a bird’s eye view.
4. You Should have command of sufficient subordinate trains of thought to aid you in unfolding and impressing the subject. – Here the preacher must have sufficient information in his or her mind in which to draw from, but the preacher should not feel compelled to use any individual piece of information. The key is to have a large amount of information from which to draw.

Conclusion

In Storr’s method, the preacher must memorize and have mastered the basic structure of the sermon. However the illustrations and examples that the preacher uses should not be totally planned out before the sermon is presented. The preacher should have many stories and ideas to illustrate the sermon and then allow the moment to bring whatever of these illustrations that one would present.