This is a wonderful idea, sharing actual preachers notes to see how they tick.
There are many misunderstandings about how to make full-text manuscripts work. One neglected issue is a proper understanding of how to lay out and present the full-text notes you have prepared on your page.
Another is the role that notes play in the week of preparation. For me the full text notes are a document that is drafted and redrafted the whole week long. It not only contains my sermon notes but other thoughts, ideas, questions, and material that has been cut. By the time I get to Sunday my manuscript is in it’s third, fourth or fifth draft – it is part of me, my soul is in that manuscript.
For an example that I found fascinating, you can see one of Philip Jensen’s sermon notes on the Cathedral web site here: http://cathedral.sydney.anglican.asn.au/media/pdfs/Biblical_Church_1.pdf
Now I don’t actually know if they are his actual notes or just prettified and formatted for the web. But I love the beauty of these notes, they are very preachable, quality large font, lots of whitespace, indented according to emphasis, logically layed out.
Some people who have tried and rejected full-text only tried it preaching from blocky essay like pages of small font, large paragraph, dense writing. They haven’t mastered the art of the beautiful and workable full-text manuscript.
I look forward to seeing more examples from the great ones on Harris’ blog.
So over the next few weeks we’re going to do a series of posts that feature a brief introduction to a preacher and then a link to a PDF of the notes from one of his sermons. The PDF document will show exactly what that pastor carried into the pulpit when he preached his message. I think you’ll enjoy the diversity of styles. Some men do full manuscripts; others write out much less. Most type, one writes his sermons by hand. The goal is to show pastors the different ways that preachers work and hopefully encourage them in the preaching task.