Manuscript Preaching
And Why I Changed My Mind On This
First time I ever saw a manuscript preacher was Josh Kimes, an Australian preacher that was on staff at Hillsong NYC.
Josh had a binder of typed out messages that he would carry around with him like Moses and the tablets of God.
Bro had like 50+ messages in there for whatever the occasion.
And he was good—I mean—as good as a manuscript preacher can be. They are reading from their notes. Their body is mostly glued to one spot. Their eyes are mostly on the text they are reading.
What Josh did worked for him but I found that the missing tool in his belt that most Hillsong style preachers desperately need is audience connection. And that’s difficult to accomplish reading a manuscript.
Here’s my MOST SAVAGE critique of Hillsong style communicators: if you’re gonna be Diet Coke on content, you have to over emphasize connection through stories and funny observations.
I never took notes once in the 10+ years of being at Hillsong. Why would I? But I was guaranteed some funny observations, engaging stories, and a general sense of encouragement in the things of God on a given topic.
But nobody could accuse Hillsong of teaching people the Bible on a Sunday morning. I never heard a whole text read and explained in its context once. Not once. Isolated verses strewn quickly together to support a point was the modus operandi.
Honestly? I don’t really care. I mean I think people deserve better, but whatever. There are no perfect churches and what they did they did better than anybody on the planet. There is still a Hillsong shaped hole in the church right now, one that Bethel seems to be stepping into.
Back to manuscripts: the first time I saw manuscripts done in a way that I was like, DANG—that is wild—was Dr Chris Palmer at theosConference two years ago.
He’s such a good writer that his writing became the focus. And then I wrote 5 sermons that are manuscripts and they are some of my best, in my mind.
Here’s why you may want to incorporate manuscript preaching into your sermon building as a tool that you occasionally use:
