#663. Taking notes during sermons.

That I am aware of, my wife has never taken notes when she’s come to see me speak. Although she would argue that she’s heard whatever I’m saying a million times because I usually try to just speak what we’re living, I think her gathering a binder full of notes might be in order.

When I was a kid, I remember one pastor’s wife who used to do that. My mom kind of held her up as the gold standard pastor’s wife. She sat in the front row every Sunday morning with an open notebook and a scribbling hand. And my mother, although rapt with attention to hear what my dad was preaching, rarely took notes and I think may have secretly compared herself to that other pastor’s wife down the street.

The challenge is that there’s really not a good system to compare sermon note taking skills. You would think that by this point, Christianity Today would have released some sort of scorecard we could all universally use to grade the quality of our note taking but like so many other things within Christian culture I fear that burden has fallen upon our shoulders. And thus, I give you …

The Stuff Christians Like Sermon Note Taking Score Card

1. You don’t take any notes during the sermon. = 0 points

2. You take notes on the bulletin = + 2 points

3. Your bulletin immediately enters the swirl of floorboard trash in your car, that may include ridiculous Taco Bell wrappers that try to convince you there’s such a thing as the “fourth meal” between dinner and breakfast and is thus never to be seen again. = 0 points

4. You hand the bulletin back to the usher at the end, attempting to be green but forgetting you’ve scribbled in it and like the guy who half fills out the crossword puzzle in the Delta Sky Magazine, have ruined the fill in the blanks for the next person. = – 3 points

5. You bring your own pen. = + 1 point

6. It’s a uniball micro vision = + 2 points

7. In more than 1 color = + 3 points

8. You ask to borrow my pen. = – 10 points

9. You chew on it in front of me during the middle of the sermon. = – 1 million points

10. Your Bible has some sort of fanny pack like case that holds more office supplies than an Office Depot. = +3 points

11. You use a 5 star notebook = + 1 point

12. It’s college ruled and not wide ruled which is for lazy people who need an acre of space to write. = +2 points

13. You use a Moleskine notebook = +4 points

14. You are constantly telling people you use a Moleskine notebook. = 0 points

15. You correct people when they mispronounce “Moleskine” = – 3 points

16. You take all your notes on your iPhone or Blackberry. = +1 point

17. You check your email and or NFL scores in between notes = – 2 points

18. You color code your notes = +1 points

19. Your color-coding system is 19% more complicated than the periodic table of elements. = +3 points

20. You run out of paper and instead scribble notes on the outside of your hand. = +1 point

21. You do an inadequate job of washing your hands and show up to work looking like Guy Pearce in the movie Momento with “James 3:2, whoa!” scrawled on your hand. = -3 points

22. You write your notes directly in your Bible. = +1 point

23. Your Bible is so small that you’re forced to wear a jewelers’ eye magnifying glass to scribble tiny enough in the margins = + weird

24. Your bulletin is printed on ink repelling paper so instead of taking notes you just crumple it up in a ball of rage and throw it back at the ushers as you exit the building. = – 6 points

How did you score?

0-5 points = You should be ashamed of yourself. What are you doing, just listening?

6-15 points = Much better. You probably have at least one notebook over the years that is jam packed with sermon notes.

16+ = Congratulations, you’ve got a PhD in sermon noteology. Your bookshelves at home are stacked with old notebooks, you can lay your hand on a sermon comment from 14 years ago and your ring finger has a “sermon note callus” on it from overuse.

I personally scored lower than I anticipated.

How about you?

And what did I miss?