Bible Storytelling Progress Note 08/20/2007

I'm going to try to document my progress under the label "progress note".

I've been telling and then preaching on a Bible Story from the Gospels since the end of June 2007. It's nearing the end of August 2007.

In God's providence I know of two people who are coming who cannot read and will not be able to read. That is one reason I switched to the Bible Story Telling format - to reach those who cannot read and who are forced to retain things in their memory. My hope is to plant memorable Bible Stories as a seed in their hearts and minds. I also have a number of people whom I suspect do not read for fun or as a preferred learning method. Hopefully this will help them as well.

I've noticed that if I tell a Bible story to start the sermon, at least if I tell it well the sermon gets off to a good start. Even if it goes "downhill" from there, I've kept strong eye contact and communication with them for the first few minutes.

My sermons are changing too as I self-consciously seek to be better about explaining, illustrating, and applying each lesson derived from the story. That's due to Jack Day's influence. This probably helps them be more "Puritan" since it forces me to talk about the story's doctrine and "uses".

What I've also been doing is switching from a manuscript to a 1 page sheet of notes which I try not to refer to. This is also a result of Jack's influence - he said once "if you can't remember it, why should they?"

This has caused me to keep much better eye contact with the people throughout the sermon, to speak more personally to people and I think communicate better. People who liked my preaching before, seem to like it better these last 2 months.

I think confining myself to one text of scripture in the Bible Story and not trying to weave together many scriptures from the lectionary readings I formerly used allows me and them to focus on the story with fewer distractions.