Jared Wilson on Taking Notes During Sermons

Jared Wilson offers some helpful thoughts today at The Gospel Driven Church on the value of note-taking during sermons. Though generally against note-taking, Wilson is far from dogmatic and his reasons are well-considered and developed.

For a long time I have been a note-taker.  I tend to get distracted easily and it helps me to focus my attention to take notes. Along with Wilson though, I was prompted to think about this issue a couple years ago when I heard Tim Keller say, "I don't mind if you take notes at the beginning of a message, but if you're still taking notes at the end, I feel like I haven't brought it home."

So should I ditch my note-taking?  I don't know.  In the end, this much is certainly true: How we receive a sermon says a lot about what we understand preaching to be.  Though I will most likely (at least for the meantime) continue to take notes during sermons, there is real value in what Wilson has to say:

Ditching the note-taking preaching ethos both elevates sermons and properly diminishes them. It treats a sermon as proclamation aided by the Spirit, which gives the sermon a supernatural weight. On the other hand, by treating all words in a sermon as expendable to memory, it puts the preacher's words in the right place compared to the Scripture's words. It diminishes the impact of a well-turned phrase and magnifies real revelation.

Click here to read his entire post.