Tag: sermon preparation

One More Reason to Manuscript Your Sermons

Published on by nickcadyLeave a comment

Yesterday morning I had something happen that has never happened to me before in 16 years of preaching almost every Sunday: I woke up and I had lost my voice.

My sermon was ready, so I went to church hoping tea would fix it, but it didn’t. I took a Covid test, which came back negative, so I prepared to preach the first service, but during worship I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do it. So, I went up on stage and asked our worship pastor, Michael, to preach my sermon from my notes.

My notes are in a manuscript format; I like to write out every word I’m going to say. I don’t read my notes, but writing out every word helps me process my thoughts and plan my message.

There are other benefits to manuscripting, some of which I’ve written about more here: Speaking Tips: Manuscript, but Don’t Read. For example, I know that 4000 words in a Pages document equates to about 30 minutes, so manuscripting helps me keep my sermon the right length.

Another benefit of manuscripting is that lately I have been re-preaching some of my older sermons which had lost or damaged recordings. For the sake of our radio show, and so we can have complete series archives, I have been re-preaching these “lost” sermons, and having a manuscript makes it easy to pull up my notes and re-preach an old sermon without much preparation.

If I get asked to guest speak, having a manuscript of my past messages makes it easy to create a new sermon based on something I’ve shared before. Or when people request a text version of a particular teaching, it is easy to send them my manuscript.

Furthermore, I am currently beginning the process of turning some of my sermon series into books. Having manuscripts of my messages makes that process much easier.

Certainly there are downsides or detriments to manuscript preaching, like when someone reads their notes in the pulpit and fails to make eye contact and connect with their listeners, or when someone is so dependent on their notes that they leave no room for the Holy Spirit to inspire prophetic ad libs.

But yesterday I realized one more benefit of manuscripting my sermons: Mike, our worship pastor was able to preach my sermon without any preparation, and by the second and third services, he was ad libbing and making it his own.

Here’s the video (starts at 32:27):

Writing Faithful Sermons Faster: Discussion with Ryan Huguley

Published on by nickcadyLeave a comment
114_RyanHuguley.jpg
Click this image to listen to the episode

It was the day after Thanksgiving in 2017, and we were in San Diego, where my wife Rosemary is from. The next day, Saturday, we were driving back to Colorado, so I could make it back for church on Sunday, which meant that I had one day to prepare my sermon for that Sunday.

Rosemary and the kids decided to go to the zoo, which gave me 12 hours to prepare. At this point, I usually spent 20-25 hours preparing each sermon, so this was a daunting task.

8 Hours or Less: Writing faithful sermons faster by [Huguley, Ryan]

After they left our AirBnB for the day, I was scrolling Instagram (instead of studying!), and came across a post of someone holding a copy of the book: 8 Hours or Less: Writing Faithful Sermons Faster by Ryan Huguley.

I immediately did the math in my head: If this book could really help me do what the title claimed, then that would give me 3.5 hours to read the book, and 8 hours to write my sermon! I purchased the book on Amazon, read it, wrote my sermon, and made it back to Colorado on time for church that Sunday. That sermon can be found here: 5 Solas: Soli Deo Gloria (Colossians 3:16-24)

Since that time, I have implemented Ryan’s process, and shared about my growth in this area at the Expositors Collective training weekends.

Related post: How Much Time Should a Pastor Spend Preparing a Sermon?

Recently I had the opportunity to chat with Ryan over Zoom about doing ministry in Salt Lake City, his method for sermon preparation, and what advice he has for those who teach and preach.

The recording of that conversation was just released on the Expositors Collective Podcast. You can listen to it here: Expositors Collective Podcast: Writing Faithful Sermons Faster – Ryan Huguley, or click here to listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Check it out, and I’d love to hear your feedback on in the comments!

How to Write a Sermon: Outlining

Published on by nickcadyLeave a comment

The most recent episode of the Expositors Collective Podcast is a talk I gave at the Expositors Collective training weekend in San Diego back in April 2019.

I begin the talk with a story about my dad and his habit of starting to drive without knowing the destination, and how many people approach sermon or message preparation in a similar way.

I then explain the the process I go through each week in writing, which begins with studying and outlining, but also includes collaboration.

If you’ve ever wanted to see behind the curtain for how I go about writing a sermon, listen in: Episode 64 – Start With the Destination in Mind

Join us at an upcoming Training Weekend!

We already have the schedule for the next several Expositors Collective training weekends. More information is available at ExpositorsCollective.com

  • Howell, NJ – September 20-21, 2019
  • Las Vegas, NV – February 21-22, 2020
  • Seattle, WA – May 8-9, 2020
  • Honolulu, HI – October 16-17, 2020

 

Overcoming Blind Spots

Published on by nickcady2 Comments

brand-perception-800x450

Have you ever heard a recording of your voice and been appalled by how it sounds? “Surely there must be something wrong with that recording,” we think, “because there’s no way that that’s how I really sound!”

But guess what: That’s how you actually sound to other people. The problem isn’t with the recording, it’s that your perception of how you sound doesn’t match the reality of how you actually sound.

From Time’s article: “Why Do I Hate the Sound of My Own Voice?“: “When you hear people talking, sound waves travel through the air and into your ears, vibrating your ear drums. Your brain then transforms those vibrations into sound. However, when you’re the one talking, your vocal cords and airways vibrate. That means you receive two sources of sound: the sound waves that travel into your ears, as well as vocal cord vibrations.”

What is true of our voices is also true of us in general: we aren’t very good judges of how we really are. There is some amount of discrepancy between our perception of ourselves and how other people see us.

We call these things “blind spots.” They are the things about ourselves that we do not see clearly, or are completely unaware of. They can be habits, attitudes, fears, insecurities or other idiosyncrasies.

For example: I can see things in my wife that she doesn’t realize about herself. She is blind to them, but I can see them. The same is true the other way around.

We all have blind spots, but if you were to ask me, “Hey Nick, what are your blind spots?”, my response would be: “How the heck should I know?! By definition they are things that I am blind to! – that I don’t see about myself!”

And oftentimes our blind spots are our greatest weaknesses; they’re the things which can do the most damage to us or hold us back from reaching our goals – they’re the things which will lead us into ruin and trouble!

If that’s the case, then we’ve got a big problem! Because if there are things about us which have the potential to hold us back and even hurt us or wreck us, but we are unable to see them, then we are in big trouble! What can we do to overcome our blind spots?

The only way to overcome our blind spots is by having other people in our lives whom we allow to get to know us well enough that they can see those things about us, and by giving those people permission to speak into your life.

Not any old person will do for this. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what someone’s weaknesses or blind spots are, but it does take a loving person to be willing to come alongside someone and help them see their blind spots in a way that helps rather than hurts. This is why the Bible says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6). Critiques which come from those who are not committed, loyal friends may often be accurate, but they can often be crushing.

Recently at a conference I spoke about the importance of bringing other people into a creative process. In this case I was speaking particularly about writing sermons, but I believe it is true of other creative processes as well. In order for you to overcome your blind spots, you need people who can help you overcome your idiosyncrasies and weaknesses, but who will do it from a place of commitment and a desire to help. I have experienced this, not only on a creative level, but on a personal level as well.

In order to become the people God is calling us to be, we need brothers and sisters.

Let brotherly love continue. (Hebrews 13:1)

For more on the subject of Christian community, check out this recent message from White Fields Church: