Leadership Journal

I have recently been experimenting with a preaching method that is stretching me like nothing I've done before. To use a phrase from author Fred Lybrand, I have been "preaching on my feet." And this appears to be an enduring adventure.

The adventure began when I found Lybrand's book Preaching on Your Feet, which I expected to describe the benefits of unscripted preaching that fosters eyeball-to-eyeball engagement with hearers. He did that, but he went on to describe what I had not anticipated—a preaching experience that includes a greater sense of inspiration, freedom, and being fully in the moment.

That caught my interest.

I could identify with his description of the disconnect that can occur with scripted preaching between the inspiration experienced in the study versus what actually happens in delivery. How many times have I outlined a sermon that was powerful to me in the study but sagged in the pulpit?

As Lybrand describes it, preaching on your feet is not delivering a memorized sermon or even (necessarily) a memorized outline. It's not fundamentally about trying to remember what you thought about during sermon preparation. Instead, Lybrand encourages thorough preparation coupled with allowing the inspiration to come at the actual moment of delivery.

That was good news, because I've tried memorizing sermons and found that it's not an option for someone preaching once or more each week. Done badly, the results of trying to preach from a memorized script are worse than skillfully reading a manuscript.

Nevertheless, as intrigued as I was by the idea of preaching on my feet, I did not see it as a style that suited me well. During my 33 years of preaching, I have typically prepared full outlines: introduction, main points, all sub-points, and conclusion. When delivering the goods, I rarely stray from my prepared notes, though normally I maintain good eye contact and glance at my outline only occasionally.

Still, my sermon delivery is all about recall. I've never identified with preachers who describe getting ideas while they preach. If my ideas didn't come ahead of time, they generally didn't come at all.

That brings up something else relevant about me. I'm generally not a rambler. I usually don't follow associated ideas smoothly one after another, like someone surfing links on the web. Winging it has been the farthest thing from my experience. Most people would probably describe me as introverted and logical, carefully weighing my thoughts before they come forth like dollars from a money manager's hand.

So as I read Lybrand's book, I had lots of questions. How do you actually do this? How do you prepare? Preaching on your feet sounds like a great idea, but I could get 15 minutes into a message and run out of things to say. I might find myself wandering through ideas without direction—an embarrassing flub.

Even so, I was drawn to it irresistibly and figured it was worth a try.

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