Remembering What the Pastor Said with Focused Notes

“When Will I Ever Use This?”

“When will I ever use this,” is a phrase all too familiar to a ninth grade teacher’s ears.  I’m sure I have thought or said this in my youth with the same patronizing tone as my fantastic fourteen year-olds sometimes do today.  My, how the tables have turned.

So, it fills my heart with joy when God reassures me that a lesson I am teaching will not only be applicable to my kiddos, but useful myself and others as well.  Taking the lessons and stories God allows me to experience in the classroom and reteach them in a way that is applicable to those seeking to grow in their own relationship with Christ is at the heart of what I believe God desires this blog to be all about.

One unique strategy my AVID kids are learning this year is what is called the Focused Note-Taking Process, a five step process to taking and revisiting notes that greatly increases how much one is able to recall from those notes.  Today, we will be taking this method out of the classroom and into the sanctuary as we learn this handy way to remember more of what the pastor said.

The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Focused Notes

The FNT Process is both a way of revisiting and revising notes and taking the notes themselves.  Therefore, it takes extra time than the original time we spend listening and taking notes, no matter how diligently we originally take our notes.  So why must we revisit our notes to help us remember them?  AVID, in the PowerPoint presentation they provide for me to introduce the topic to the kiddos, says, “The more times and the larger variety of ways learners interact with information, the more likely they are to understand and remember.”  (“FNT_Overview.” AVID. )  So revisiting something, our sermon notes for example, and doing so in different ways will help us better remember what all was said.

Furthermore, the wise man is called to be diligent multiple times throughout scripture and God desires we “remember our leaders, those who spoke to us the word of God” (Hebrews 13:7).  He promises that his Holy Spirit will “teach us all things and bring to our remembrance all that (Jesus) said to us.” (John 14:26)  While God’s words of inspiration are often through our pastor, they won’t help serve us well if we can’t remember what he said later that week.  This is the problem I have been encountering Sunday after Sunday and one which can be solved through taking focused notes.

The 5 Steps of the Focused Note-Taking Process

1. Taking your Notes – If taking notes in church is new to you, don’t worry. You simply need to start practicing and like anything that takes practice, will actually get better at this with time.Here are some pointers:
   • Write down what you find important
   • If your pastor or boss breaks things into sections (one of my pastors always tries to have three main, usually alliterative, points), be mindful of this as you make an outline style.
   • Don’t worry if it’s not perfect; taking notes is only step one.
   • There is one more crucial ingredient to this recipe: make sure you leave space on one side of your paper. You should also provide a bit of space between your bullet points or sections of ideas your pastor is talking on.  This is important and we will see why here in a second.
2. Marking or “Processing” Your Notes – We introduced the concept of annotating our Bible in a series of blog posts earlier.

   

   Similarly, we can implement this same strategy but with our own original notes.  This step and step 3 go hand in hand, and while I won’t dig as deep as I did for my kiddos, here are a few simple tips for marking your notes:

   • Do this and the following steps in a different color pen than you originally used.
   • Groups your notes into sections you may not have encompassed originally,
   • Identify the major ideas and take-aways from their less-important counterparts,
   • Cross out anything that might not be important.
   • If possible, do this step within the first 24 hours of your original notes.
   • Marking your text by boxing, highlighting, or underlining important words, phrases or main ideas from a sentence or section. Limit yourself to only a certain number of each so you don’t find your notes completely highlighted.
   • Place a star next to the most important take-away, or theme, of the entire sermon.
   • Break all of your notes into sections. In teacher world, we call this “chunking.”
   • Remember that however you choose to mark your notes, do it in a way you feel comfortable, and your confidence in doing this will grow with time.
3. Annotating or “Connecting your Thinking” – You can do this step either during or after step 2. While step two focused on marking our original notes to emphasize or deemphasize certain ideas, this step is writing off to the side in those spaces we provided for ourselves our notes, questions, thoughts and connections God is leading you to have.
   The whole goal of listening to a sermon, taking notes during a sermon, reading the Bible, or any like is to draw near to God, learn from him and put into use something applicable for his glory.  James 1:22 says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”  Taking the time and going back through your sermon notes will make you a more powerful vessel for the Holy Spirit to work through.One last thing, if you are worried about writing down the wrong thought, question, comment or connection, don’t be.  When you are doing this, just write down whatever comes to mind and God will guide you through his Holy Spirit.

   When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ~ John 16:13 ESV

4. Summarize – The last part you need to worry about with a pen in hand is summarizing and reflecting on what you’ve learned. Writing a summary at the end helps you reinforce in yourself and in your own words the main and most important points God wants you to take home with you.  At the end of your notes, with that new and different colored pen you’ve been utilizing during steps 2 & 3, write a 4-6 sentence summary of your sermon notes.  Boy, I sounded like a teacher in my head as I typed that, “Mr. Fletcher teacher voice” and all.  Ha!
   When summarizing, make sure to include…
   • the theme (you can know the theme of anything by filling in the following blank: God/the author/the pastor really wants me to know ________________),
   • the main point from each section, and
   • you can end it or conclude it with what the sermon means to you.
5. Apply – Many subjects we take notes over will include some sort of call-to-action. This is especially true with any good sermon.  A good sermon will make you feel convicted, to do more with your life to the glory of God, as well we should (1 Cor 10:31; 2 Cor 5:9; Col 3:17, 3:23).  What was the big take-away and how can you apply that in your life?  Revisit these notes from time to time even after you sat down for steps 2-4 to better remember this loving conviction.

Conclusion – Proof is in the Pudding

In conclusion, if you find yourself back to being your 15-year old self, curious but still doubtful, saying to your high-school teacher, “Yeah, but does this really work?”, I will tell you “yes.”.  There was a sermon my pastor, JP, preached at my church about a month ago on humility.  Besides being on humility, after utilizing the FNT process, I am able to remember his illustration comparing the oil in a car to humility in our relationships, how oil is an acronym for “overlook our differences,” “invest an interest,” and “look to Christ as an example of humility” and many other important trinkets of wisdom I otherwise would probably not have been able to remember.

I 100% believe that utilizing this process, the same process I encourage my kids to use, has helped me remember all of these little ins and outs from this particular sermon.  God is good, and he can do anything.  His will is perfect, his ways are pure, and he loved us so much that he gave his Son to die for our sins.  “He is generous,” is the understatement of eternity.  Nevertheless, he is a diligent God, desires us to be like him in all ways (Ephesians 5:1) and therefore desires us to be diligent.

So, trust that God is trying to teach you something in the sermon you are listening to, bust out a notepad, a pen, and get to jotting.  Then, be truly diligent and revisit those notes and give this process a try.

God, thank you for your word, for the body of believers you place around us, the pastors you place around us at our home churches, and the Holy Spirit whom you desire to speak to us through that pastor and others around us.  Help us to be diligent in all that we do, especially in discerning your benevolent will for us in our lives through the sermons we listen to and the notes we take and reflect on.  Thank you for your Son, and his diligence he exemplified throughout his entire life.  Help us to be like him always, because without your help, we will fail.  Thank you for that.  We love you, and it’s in Jesus’ name, by the power of the Holy Spirit we pray, amen.

Citation:

“FNT_Overview.” AVID.