bookslover
Puritan Board Doctor
The simplest answer, of course: if taking notes helps you, then do it. If it doesn't, then don't.
Taking notes during a sermon is wrong? Right?
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Reformed Catholic
Puritan Board Freshman
No worries.
Like JP said, I was referring to another post. To quote directly:
Unless Jim's point has entirely gone over my head (entirely possible), it seems to me that he is saying exactly what I was concerned about. "Such and such a view is so ridiculous that I can't fathom how it's even being discussed" is something any person can say to any theological discussion. I've heard Baptists tell me they can't even figure out why there is a controversy over baptism when the Scripture is so clear. This is why I am concerned with such an attitude. Even if Jim and others are entirely right that taking notes during sermons poses no danger whatsoever and Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones had no idea what he was talking about, the attitude of "this topic is so silly it's not even worth discussing" is vain. We need less of it.
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
Well, for one, your quoted statements are not exactly what he said. But secondly, he does kind of have a point. Baptism is one thing. It is kind of interesting that some people would view note-taking as a thing worth making rules about. Baptism and note-taking are also not comparable in degree of significance. If he said that about baptism, I would share your concern. But as regards this topic, I personally think what we need less of is people prescribing how we should and shouldn't listen to a sermon, and there are lots of good posts in here explaining why that is. I particularly appreciated @Theoretical's recent post in that vein but there have been other good posts showing how one can understand MLJ's remark while still arguing that he missed the mark. You don't need to assume that we're just writing him off altogether, especially when it is so readily apparent in this thread and others that he is held in high esteem here.
Sometimes really good men miss the mark, as anyone who likes John Piper knows.
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The Calvinistic Methodist
Puritan Board Freshman
Where does John Piper “miss the mark?” I just started listening to his sermon's recently and have been enjoying them. I haven’t run into anything alarming yet? I’m not jumping to anyone’s defense, just genuinely want to explore your remark to see if there’s something I need to be on alert for.
Sorry, this isn’t related to the original post haha
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
He wrote an article a couple years back arguing against one's right to self defense in situations such as a home invasion. It was pretty bad. Doesn't change the fact that he has said lots of good things.
iainduguid
Puritan Board Junior
It feels like some of the responses in this thread may have missed what MLJ and Tim Keller actually said. No one said you can't take notes; they simply said that there is a possibility that people taking notes may be misunderstanding the point of the sermon and regarding it simply as information transfer. Keller didn't even criticize the note taker but laid the fault at his own feet. And of course, as a seminary professor, even in my lectures, I hope that sometimes the glory of our subject will overwhelm all of us and the note taking is laid aside in the face of the surpassing greatness of God and the gospel. Which doesn't mean I don't want my students to take notes, but that I want them to be thinking about our subject in a different way from students of differential calculus (glorious though that topic is).
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
That's a fair point. I may have read some of the comments in this thread back into the original MLJ remark, which would be inappropriate. Some of the comments in this thread seemed to tend, implicitly or overtly, toward making note-taking intrinsically problematic, and I at least was pushing back against that. But you're right... on reviewing the thread, I do have to acknowledge that MLJ and Keller were not going that far.
Rom
Puritan Board Junior
It is interesting that you mention seminary. When I was in some of my classes, I had to close the lid on my computer and just sit back and take in the glory of the Subject. Having been a computer science student prior to that, I can certainly say there is a difference. I do not intend to create a hard and fast rule about notes either (though I am not in the habit of taking them). Many in our congregation take notes to the profit of their soul / family. My own children take notes and review them. My daughter has hung up her notes from her favorite sermon and it is a reminder to her soul each time she goes into her room of her Christ.
Polanus1561
Puritan Board Senior
Yes actually, any father who wants to review the sermon with family must necessarily take some form of notes... right?
Rom
Puritan Board Junior
Depends on his memory and how plain the preaching is. Some can simply look at the text preached and drive the main points back.
At the end of the day if the sermon is so complex that it doesn’t have a primary thrust and exhortation, it is unlikely it will ever lodge in the soul, which is where it belongs so that it can be lived out. Some earlier posters alluded to that.
iainduguid
Puritan Board Junior
That is something entirely different. Research shows greater retention with handwritten notes (where people are required to be more selective) and electronic notes (where people can try to write everything down), even when computers are not connected to the internet, which brings its own distractions. I too discourage use of computers for notetaking in my classes, but I don't forbid it (which perhaps illustrates the point I'm making...)
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
While I don't entirely disagree with this, I would not commit to agreeing with it across the board. The sermons I sit under don't always have a clear primary thrust as is commended in this thread. It's not my place to defend or criticize that aspect at this point, but I can tell you that some of the more complex sermons have been precisely those which most lodged in my soul. It took note-taking, review, and discussion, but that effort only solidified the impact of those sermons.
In fact, last night's sermon was just such a sermon. I really needed to keep the text open to follow the pastor, and ended up taking two pages of notes (not an easy task for me at this point). Time will reveal with greater certainty, but I came away thinking it was one of the most profound and helpful sermons I have heard in a decade. My wife was not able to attend, and I had to take out my notes to adequately recap the sermon for her.
All I'd say is that we should exercise care in drawing some of the correlations that are being drawn in this thread.
D
Deleted member 6112
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Friendly nitpick for everyone's benefit. The Doctor's surname is not Jones; it's Lloyd-Jones. Lloyd is not his middle name--Martyn is (though he was called by his middle name). You'll often see his name written as D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. D stands for David (not Doctor): David Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
He was a doctor, and is often referred to as The Doctor as a nickname; but his doctorate was not in divinity, but in medicine, so it wouldn't be proper to call him something like Rev. Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. He's either Rev. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones or Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
He was a doctor, and is often referred to as The Doctor as a nickname; but his doctorate was not in divinity, but in medicine, so it wouldn't be proper to call him something like Rev. Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. He's either Rev. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones or Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
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Rom
Puritan Board Junior
I also do not entirely disagree with what you have to say, either. I have preached more than a few sermons that probably required much review afterward. I do not think any of us are creating rules. These are just observations and what I have noted is that the impact from the preaching ministry will often come (especially to the less studious) with accumulation over time rather than one information blast from a single sermon.
Polanus1561
Puritan Board Senior
won't introductional / 1st sermon of a book sermon series have some note taking involved? When we did Revelation, a handout was given beforehand to congregants on the cyclical Amillennial view.
Rom
Puritan Board Junior
Thanks for asking, what I desire is that in some way I see that they have met with Jesus Christ by His Spirit.
In that, there are things I see that have encouraged me as I have preached, each suited to the particular soul, what is being preached, etc.
1. Rapt note taking where one is impacted by some truth that they feel like they must note down for their mind is engaged with the Word.
2. The eyes fixed upon the preaching and the soul being visibly impacted.
3. Joy in the face at the thought of the glory of God and the Beatific Vision to come.
4. Tears over sin and the release of it in Christ.
5. An expression that is particularly moved at the thought that the lost are going to hell unless Christ sets them free.
6. The congregation being transfixed - I recall a few sermons where the awe of God was palpable and even the little children and babies stopped fidgeting but there was total silence for some time.
7. The effect on them afterward is also important - does the congregation immediately get up and talk about the weather or want to converse about what they heard from God's Word?
So, it is hard to say, each person and each sermon is a bit different. But these are just some of what I have felt impact me when I sense the Spirit is conveying the truth of the Word to the hearer.
Good question, I wish I had more time to think about it, but have to run.
D
Deleted member 6112
Guest
Dear brother,
I fear I may seem to have ignored your suggestion. I responded to Dr. Duguid's concern, and was waiting to see whether he replied to either me or you, but he hasn't, so I assume that my response was satisfactory to him. If you have any further concerns or questions, I am happy to discuss, but I would rather not do it on a separate thread that exerpts that one sentence of my post to discuss it out of context. If you'd rather discuss offline we can do that too.
Alexander Suarez
Puritan Board Freshman
Good day brother,
No worries. No intention here to take your words out of context. I thought it was a good topic for a separate discussion with friendly and brotherly critical interaction if Dr. Duguid was open to it.
In your follow-up post I understood you to have clarified that by the majority of Reformed churches lacking "true preaching" you did not necessarily mean they had 'no preaching' or 'false preaching' but rather a lack of the fullness of what preaching should attain to. I am okay with that latter understanding, but shared some concern if the suggestion was the former.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
That is the key.
My response: Not necessarily. It depends on the father and his memory skills and his learning style. It's probably a good idea for many, but not all.
I have what may be a different perspective on this. This month will mark my 40th year as a newspaper reporter. My mother was trained as a reporter way back in the 1950s (Michigan State University J-school) when note-taking meant stenography classes. Not even the official court reporters making transcripts had access to audiotapes, which were very expensive, very bulky, and quite unreliable due to bad audio conditions in a typical courtroom. I'm old enough to remember being taught literal cut-and-splice techniques for large reel-to-reel audio recorders, and I've sometimes wondered what happened to the audiotapes of political speeches my father carefully preserved in the closet of our spare bedroom, to surprise and embarrass a reporter who might not have correctly quoted the public speech of some Republican official in Grand Rapids. He should have donated those tapes to the Ford Library, but I suspect they were destroyed when he sold the family home and became a full-time RVer in retirement.
As that story points out, technology has changed. My seminary professors at Calvin told me that many of Calvin's Commentaries were the product of his students in the Genevan Academy who took REALLY detailed notes of his lectio continua preaching through various books of the Bible, presented them to him afterward, and worked with Calvin and others in the Genevan Academy faculty and student body to prepare a printed text for Calvin's publishers. Note what that is saying about Calvin's preaching -- he was typically NOT preaching from full-text manuscripts, but relying on his VERY detailed knowledge of the Bible and of Christian doctrine and applying it, verse by verse, as he went through various books of the Bible.
Very few preachers today could do that even if they tried. We just don't have the memorization skills today that were normal in the 1500s for men trained in classical Greek rhetorical techniques, and which were necessary due to the great cost of paper and the difficulties and slowness of using quill pens. (I used to do calligraphy semiprofessionally, and I know what it's like to use steel-nib and copper calligraphy pens and inkwells, as was standard technology until the 1950s and the invention of ballpoint pens -- using quill pens was far more difficult.)
Here's my point. Most people who grew up with computers and the internet -- which means pretty much everybody under 40 -- simply have no idea how difficult it was to record a classroom lecture until the cost and size of recording equipment dropped to what they are today. My father rarely humiliated a reporter who had misquoted Ford, or some visiting congressman or senator, because my father understood that notetaking was inexact and imperfect. But when he did, it was a "doozy" because the reporter typically had no idea the speech was being recorded and either didn't care enough to take good notes, or honestly misheard what was said, or was deliberately misquoting the speaker thinking he could get away with it.
Last week, when I interviewed a US Senator speaking at a local event related to Fort Leonard Wood, I got the senator on tape and the senator's staff were taping the interview as well with a recorder in plain sight, which has the deterrent effect of making clear that I'd better get the quotes right or there would be consequences. That's normal today and has been common for about two decades. When I began my career, it would have been unheard of.
My notetaking is better than most people's -- not just better but a lot better. Our presiding circuit judge, whose activities I have covered all the way back to his state senate campaign twenty years ago, says my notes are as good, if not better, than the notes of the court stenographers early in his career back when audiotapes weren't yet used in the court system.
But my notes are not perfect and I know that. When something is important, I rely on the audiotape, not my notes.
In today's world, in which most churches are videotaping their sermons and broadcasting them online, how useful is notetaking?
For me, I no longer believe notetaking is useful. If I like something I hear, I can hit the "replay" button. I can even do it live -- I like to select "pull quotes" and post them live online during my pastor's morning sermons, and to do so, I take down the quote on my laptop computer in the back of church and then I "rewind" the live audio broadcast on Facebook to be sure I've quoted him correctly before I post the quote. In other words, I'm doing live during church services what television news media routinely do with "chyrons" during a political speech. It's a great way to get people watching a sermon online to pay attention to key points.
That would have been impossible even a decade ago. It's now easy with a minimum of technological competence.
If someone wants to take notes, that's fine with me. Different people have different learning styles.
But they'd better clearly understand that unless they are trained stenographers -- and almost nobody today has that training -- their notes will have errors. Note that I said "will," not "may."
Rely on the videotape of the sermon, not your notes of it, for anything important.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
Dr. Duguid, I'd like to say I agree with you. Thirty or 40 years ago, I would have agreed with you.
Technology is significantly changing learning styles, not for "old folks" like me who predate personal computers, but for "digital natives." Even in our very rural Ozark county, kids are being assigned school-issued computers in elementary school. They're growing up with typing on keyboards and reading books from screens, not physical books, as the norm.
I posted earlier on this thread about the inherent inaccuracy of note-taking, and when we do it via handwriting, the error factor greatly increases. Yes, I still have not just hundreds but thousands of pages of VERY detailed handwritten college and seminary notes buried in storage boxes somewhere, and there was a day I subscribed to what you say, namely, that we have greater retention with handwritten notes. Yes, the science backed that up, and I took the educational theory courses in college that taught me that.
Today, when we have students who have never taken handwritten notes in their lives all the way from elementary school to high school, I'm not sure the research would show the same results that I agree would have applied to me when I was in college and seminary.
Handwritten notetaking, for those who don't do it regularly, can be very distracting. To take notes at the speed necessary to follow along with a closely exegetical sermon requires real focus and the focus may lead to attention being given to the trees and not the forest, i.e., the secondaries and not the main point. There are also very real issues of physical discomfort and hand cramping. I have spent 40 years of my life using reporter's notebooks in some of the most problematic situations possible, the best of them being sitting in the back of a meeting room with a pen and notebook, but also in pouring-down rain at crash scenes and fires, taking notes in an impromptu interview on a street or a courthouse hallway, and all sorts of other venues that are NOT conducive to good hearing or legible writing. I have had WAY too many situations of getting back to my office and saying, "I know what Mr. Smith said, but I can't read my own notes, and if I have to defend my notes in court, I can't do it, so I'd better not risk using that great quote."
We're in a transition phase between handwritten notetaking being the norm and laptops being the standard.
I would not be surprised if educational theory researchers in a decade find that there is no longer much correlation between handwritten notetaking and mental retention of data, and perhaps the opposite will be true, as fewer and fewer students are used to handwriting and as legibility continues to deteriorate.
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
@darrellmaurina - all this presumes that technical accuracy and comprehensiveness are key to the process of note-taking during a sermon. That may be true in some cases, for some people, under some preachers - I won't draw any hard and fast lines either way.
What I will say is that it's not the case for me. Note-taking in this context is intended to be an aid to the exercise of spiritual/intellectual/emotional engagement with the sermon, and as such is designed to facilitate that process and not to provide a verbatim account of the sermon. It's precisely the fact that note-taking is "slow" and "cumbersome" that makes it worthwhile. At this time, I have a hopefully temporary condition such that I can only scrawl in large printed letters - any attempts to do better, much less replicate my formerly neat and minuscule cursive, are painful in a way that puts my other aches and complaints in a different perspective. So writing is now even slower than before. No matter. I write very little and save up for Sundays, and I avoid superfluity in my notes. But it's that forced process of synthesizing the information into something that can be written down in the moment which makes note-taking so valuable. It's a very different setting, with very different needs, from a courtroom or news interview.
What I will say is that it's not the case for me. Note-taking in this context is intended to be an aid to the exercise of spiritual/intellectual/emotional engagement with the sermon, and as such is designed to facilitate that process and not to provide a verbatim account of the sermon. It's precisely the fact that note-taking is "slow" and "cumbersome" that makes it worthwhile. At this time, I have a hopefully temporary condition such that I can only scrawl in large printed letters - any attempts to do better, much less replicate my formerly neat and minuscule cursive, are painful in a way that puts my other aches and complaints in a different perspective. So writing is now even slower than before. No matter. I write very little and save up for Sundays, and I avoid superfluity in my notes. But it's that forced process of synthesizing the information into something that can be written down in the moment which makes note-taking so valuable. It's a very different setting, with very different needs, from a courtroom or news interview.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
I wish you well with your medical condition.
I do think we need to recognize that different people have different learning styles, and an added complication is that preaching styles are all over the map in ways that aren't the case for a typical college professor's class.
What works for one person may not work for another -- and that applies to both the preacher and the hearer.
Something I should have said earlier, but didn't, is that if a preacher is sticking closely to his text, the outline of his message is likely the line-by-line versification of the Scriptures, or perhaps of the Catechism. I think notetaking in that situation may be helpful, or less than helpful, depending on learning styles.
Quite a few preachers, particularly outside the Reformed world, are not doing that, and trying to take notes may show that the preacher is either "winging it" without preparation or is "trusting the spirit" or is imposing some man-made outline on his text without careful attention to what the text itself says. To be clear, I'm not saying this is common in the Reformed world. But it is common outside the Reformed world, and I've seen enough Reformed men who take their clues from "do what works" approaches to preaching in the evangelical world to know that this is not an unknown problem in our circles.
Notetaking may have the unintended benefit of showing people in the congregation that their preacher simply is not taking enough time to prepare. Maybe that means the elders need to defend his time better against "ministry demands" that take away from sermon preparation. Maybe the elders need to have a heart-to-heart talk with their pastor to encourage him to spend less time listening to "that new family that transferred in from First Megachurch" that wants more "life application preaching," and spend more time teaching the text to that family and teaching them why exegesis of Scripture, not just the Five Points, is key to a church being Reformed. There are plenty of churches in the YRR and "New Calvinist" movement, that, by God's grace, are preaching the importance of God's sovereign election in salvation, but are continuing to preach and teach and run their church life in ways that simply are not Reformed.
Or maybe there is a less good explanation and the pastor needs to be told to spend more time in his study before showing up in the pulpit on Sunday.
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
I heartily agree with your most recent remarks. Our preacher tends to work his way through the text in what sometimes seems like a semi-extemporaneous fashion (though as I've gotten more attentive, I do think a fair bit of work goes into the sermons). This means they rarely follow a three-point outline and sometimes don't always have a clear central thrust. There may be several key points, one from each section of the text that he works through, or there might be some tangents as he explores a side issue to which the text is relevant. On his off days... well, sometimes he has off days, and I'll just leave it at that. It motivates us to continue in our habit of regular prayer for him on Saturday evenings. It was my wife's observation that his method is much more readily discerned when one keeps a Bible open to the text and eyes either on it or close to it.
With his style of preaching, note taking has been integral to me for comprehension and reflection. I won't make a rule about it, but I am certainly going to push back against anybody who tries to make blanket insinuations about the outright or possible ills of the habit.
With his style of preaching, note taking has been integral to me for comprehension and reflection. I won't make a rule about it, but I am certainly going to push back against anybody who tries to make blanket insinuations about the outright or possible ills of the habit.
TheInquirer
Puritan Board Junior
The discussion seems very trivial compared to the millions of other discussions we could be having. Lloyd-Jones and Keller are just men, I don't revere their opinions as much as you probably do. In fact, the more I got to know Keller and his work the less respect I had for him. Lloyd-Jones I know only by reputation but again, he is just a man and men say silly things all the time.
If you want to spend your energy and social capital here debating whether it is moral to take notes in a sermon, be my guest - I think the discussion is silly and a waste of time.
And surely you can tell the difference between a trivial topic and a theological discussion of importance right?
Reformed Catholic
Puritan Board Freshman
I consider the proper response to listening to a sermon important. If you consider it unimportant, perhaps you should never have replied to the thread in the first place.
There is no end to what you can call “silly and a waste of time.” Atheists and college professors may consider all the discussions on this board to be silly and a waste of time. Many Christians even consider theology discussions as a whole to be silly. Who decides? To each person, what they find important is worth discussing.
clawrence9008
Puritan Board Freshman
Brother, respectfully, why do you continue to press this issue? Whether or not a person should take notes during a sermon depends on what will allow them individually to best understand the sermon and worship God, as I’m sure MLJ and Keller would agree with, considering they were directing this advice to their own individual congregations. Considering the Word does not give any rule, whether explicitly or implicitly, on this subject, at this point I believe you are trying (whether you mean to or not) to bind the consciences of those who prefer to take notes during the sermons according to the opinions of men. Godly, wise, and qualified men, but men nonetheless. Your attitude in some of these posts is beginning to seem elitist.
To your last statement, if this is what you find important, I think your theological priorities need to be realigned.
Recipient of Grace
Puritan Board Freshman
I’m in agreement with the post above.
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