Sermon Handouts

Many of you may already know that I occasionally teach sermons at church. I have presented my first talk in 1993 or 1994, which means that this year marks the 20-year mark for me as a teacher. Over the years I have developed my own speaking style, but it is largely based upon speakers which I felt were very effective at communicating information to me. I presumed that if I connected with a speaker's style, then other people would connect with me if I did the same. That's based on an incorrect assumption that all audience members have the same listening style, but it seems to have worked well enough.

The past few years I have been speaking, I've developed handouts for each sermon. I find that a handout has several benefits:

• It forces me to structure my thoughts well enough to convey them in written format.
• It helps clarify which parts of the sermon are interpretation and which are scripture.
• If a listener's mind goes on a tangent or their kids distract them, it gives them the ability to pick up the parts of the sermon that they missed.
• It gives listeners a reference for later, in case they'd like to think about it again or study further.

In a future blog post, I can explain a little about the structure of the handouts that I use. If you'd like to see the handout I made for the sermon I presented yesterday, click here.