Do you neglect these 10 memory tips when listening to sermons?

You know the feeling.

You woke up early, dressed respectably, and drove to church – on a Sunday morning no less – to hear a sermon.

Now, only a few hours later, you can’t recall even the slightest detail of what the pastor said.

You’re ashamed to admit…

You’ve forgotten the message

Not only have you wasted your time, now you’re also depressed.

“Aren’t Christians supposed to naturally remember sermons?”

Well, no. Christians, at least the ones I know, don’t remember naturally. It takes a conscious effort.

The easiest way though to improve your sermon recall is to improve your behavior during the sermon.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably thought that listening is all that’s required to remember a message. The problem is, we usually don’t know how to listen. We think listening = sitting in a chair, watching someone’s jaw move, and interpreting the sounds into words.

That’s not listening, my friends. That’s hearing.

Listening involves interpreting meaning. Though ears are crucial to listening, those skin flaps on the sides of our heads aren’t the only tools we should use. On another level, multiple involved senses means our brains are more involved and can remember easier.

These next ten tips then show how to incorporate these other tools and senses.

Each of these tips should be implemented during the sermon. No time is necessary outside of the service for using these tips. As busy people, I’m sure you can appreciate that.

Don’t waste any more time sitting through sermons you won’t remember. Start retaining.

10 Sermon Memory Tips

1.) Pray: It seems a little too obvious. Do you pray when you listen to a sermon? What better way to remember than to ask God for help! Ask God for wisdom to remember what he has for you. To borrow a slogan from Nike, “just do it.”

2.) Read along in your Bible: When the teacher reads verses, follow in your own Bible. Reading along gives you a textual picture of the passage. Chalk one up for another involved sense.

3.) Highlight in your Bible: You don’t have to use a marker either. With a simple pen or pencil, you can circle verse numbers, underline text, and draw vertical lines and stars in the margins to mark important passages. Be careful not to mark too much though. Usually a few words at most will do. You don’t need to underline whole sentences.

4.) Take notes: While you want to highlight with discretion, take notes liberally. Don’t try to shorthand the entire message, but go ahead and write down every point you possibly can. This (along with #3) involves the feeling sense along with sight, bolstering your memory through two senses.

5.) Focus on main points: Too often, we try to listen to every word that’s said. Outside of a miracle, you’ll never remember every word. In fact, you don’t even need to hear every word to get the main points. Don’t worry about them. You’re trying to focus on the message rather than individual words.

6.) Guess what comes next: If you’re following along closely, you can often predict what will come next. What themes are developing? Why is the pastor telling this story now? How does it enforce what’s already been said? If you can guess the flow, it means you grasp the theme, which you’ll remember longer and individual words.

7.) Find answers: The Bible is full of answers to our problems. Sermons, if they are taken from the Bible, will reflect that. As you’re listening, pick out answers. For every point that’s made, a question is answered. You’ve already found some of the main points in #5. What questions do those points answer?

8.) Rehearse main points: What do you do when an acquaintance spits a telephone number at you? I know I repeat it as often as I can until I have a chance to write it down. The same trick works for sermons, though it’s a bit more challenging. When you’re listening, take a few moments here and there to recall what has already been said. Try to keep the entire sermon structure in mind while listening.

9.) Relate illustrations to your life: Pastors like telling stories because they grab attention and can demonstrate a lesson at the same time. Jesus taught primarily with stories and examples. The text is still left to you to relate these illustrations to your own life. For example, the sermon might speak of Paul and Silos singing in prison. What does that have to do with you? Perhaps you’ve never been beaten and locked in stocks, but you probably have experienced times when singing God’s praises didn’t feel like the thing to do. Can you recall a specific instance of this?

10.) Create a call to action: Almost every sermon has a call to action. If it doesn’t, make your own. Even if it does, personalize that action during the sermon. Given what you are learning, what are you going to do? Planning precisely what you will do is a powerful way to cement the lesson in your memory.

“The true art of memory is the art of attention.” – Samuel Johnson

Serving Suggestions:

(1) Take it slowly. Pick just one or two of these tips and try them next Sunday or the whenever the next sermon is.

(2) A few days later, try to recall what you remember from the sermon. Is it any easier than before you tried these tips?

(3) Experiment. Some tips will help more than others. Try different combinations to see works.