When listening to God’s Word preached, I strongly encourage that you take notes! However… if we were to collect everyone’s notes after service, I believe that everyone’s notes should look different. Not just the handwriting… but the content! If we understand that better, each of us could take better sermon notes for our own greater spiritual benefit!
The booklets and PowerPoint slides are great tools to facilitate a deeper interaction with God’s Word during the sermon. However, if approached wrongly, they can hinder potential growth by being a distraction. They are meant to facilitate our focus on the message from God’s Word, not to become the focus!
Why take notes?
Stop and consider for a moment: why do you take notes? Yes, we encourage it as a church and provide the means to do so. And note-taking has increased in our church since we started sermon discussion in our Life Groups. It helps to remember what we talked about so that we can discuss it together (and discussing together helps us remember what we talked about)!
Actually, nowhere in Scripture are we commanded to take sermon notes! We are urged to be doers of the Word and not hearers only, and to take heed how we listen. To take notes during the sermon is a tool for this purpose, rather than an assignment to complete.
Here’s my concern:
I suspect that most of our sermon notes would look the same, with the words from the slides copied to the paper. Well, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?! Yes, and no. To put everything important from the message on to the slides would be overwhelming and even more distracting. My goal instead is to put a few take-away thoughts on the slides. They are better accompanied by understanding how we got to them, and they may be less impactful than other parts of the message as well! (This is why I offer blank notes sheets with the outline, rather than fill-in-the-blanks.)
Here’s what you need to hear:
Don’t just write everything down! Yes, that’s right. If it’s all helpful to you, then by all means, please do! But write other helpful notes as well. If you just want all the notes for Life Group, use our church website as a reference and a tool; all the notes from the slides are available on the sermon page. If other parts are more helpful, please write those thoughts instead!
Then what do I write?
I’m glad you asked! Let note-taking help you to participate in the sermon by engaging with the text in thought and reflection. It may be worth switching your notes styles to see what’s most effective for you to do so.
When I study the passage and write the message, I want to emphasize application – our response – but I also want to show its meaning and purpose then, and why we apply it that way now. Here are some things to look for and perhaps write down:
- Background and context
- Connections with surrounding passages and other passages
- Meanings of words
- Fresh perspective
- Questions to examine and ponder
- Attributes of God
- Underlying heart attitudes (why is this a struggle?)
Instead of everything, jot it down if it is impactful for you, or if it raises questions, or if you want to remember that specifically. Jot down cross references mentioned so that you can look at them later. Write thoughts to ponder, truths to believe, and attributes of God to trust. And especially, write down convicting truths and decisions made in response – how will you trust and obey God in light of this?
May this both free you in your note-taking and encourage you to personalize your notes and use them to participate in the sermon and engage with Scripture!