Is the cost and time associated with creating and maintaining a sermon notebook actually worth it? The answer is an unequivocal yes. Maintaining and creating your own sermon notebook is an essential part of making sure that your sermons are as good as they can possibly be. There are several reasons for this to be the case. We will go over a lot of them in this article and the coming paragraphs.
What do you do with a sermon notebook? A sermon notebook usually is a collection of thoughts about the sermons you want to give. However, people who use a sermon notebook effectively actually use this to look back on past sermons they have delivered. A good use of the sermon notebook is to determine what worked in previous deliveries of other sermons and incorporate those into new sermons. It is in this possibility where the notebook becomes invaluable. You, as a human being, are very busy. You, like everyone else, are going to be prone to forgetting things. Unfortunately, a lot of those things that you might forget may be important to your ability to deliver a highly effective sermon. Creating and maintaining a notebook like this will help you keep organized and make sure that you remember the lessons of the past. It will help make sure that you don't repeat them in the future.
Passing on the legacy of your ministry or church teachings is another reason that a sermon notebook is very important. A sermon notebook contains the thoughts and processes of a certain person. Usually, that person is you. Yet, you may receive the sermon notebook of someone else. Possibly this person is your predecessor and you are going to step in and fill their shoes for whatever reason. It helps to have documentation of their thoughts and their experiences so that you can effectively stand on their shoulders as you build your own sermons.
Einstein has a few famous stories about him. One of the most famous stories is that he often forgot where he lived and how to get there. The reason being, according to the stories, he had more important things that he wanted to keep in his mind. Some stories say that people painted him lines that he could follow back to his house so that he didn't have to think about it. You, also, have more important things to think about than trying to remember what you thought about last night as it regards your sermon. Writing things down will be a necessary key to keeping your mind clear. If you know you can just pick up the sermon notebook and pick up where you left off then you will feel much calmer when it comes time to work on a new sermon or figure out what worked in the last one. You will not have to try to remember what you thought about at that moment. You will have an indelible version of your thoughts at that point in time. It should help you pick up right where you left off without incident. If you need a few moments then you can step away and come back with confidence.
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