An interesting approach to sermon preparation

I came across this gem while re-reading the biography of Principal John Macleod of the Free Church. Macleod was Professor of Greek in the Free Church College from 1906-13, minister of the Free North Church, Inverness, 1913-1929, and Professor of Apologetics in the Free Church College 1929-1943. While in the pastorate he was appointed Principal of the Free Church College in 1927. His lectures at Westminster in 1939 were published under the title Scottish Theology in relation to Church History since the Reformation, a magnificent summary of Scottish Theology, marred only by the fact that the vast amount of references are unattributed. Before entering the ministry he had also taught as a schoolteacher in my native island of Lewis.

The biography was written by George Collins, who was Professor of Church History at the Free Church College from 1963-82. On Macleod's preaching, Collins writes:

...Principal Macleod never regarded himself as a penman, and had no special liking for the penman's craft. His preparation for the pulpit entailed but very little expenditure of writing materials. His phenomenal gift of memory, his rich stores of information, his well-disciplined mind and remarkable facility of expression freed his path to the pulpit of many of those obstacles that beset the feet of more ordinary men.

Indeed we have known him, by a slip of the tongue, to give the wrong verse number of the passage on which he had intended to preach, and, instead of waiting to correct himself, to go right ahead with an impressive sermon on the verse which he had erroneously announced, although he had never before preached from it.

When he wrote an outline of his sermon at all, it was usually after he had preached it; and unless he happened to be writing for publication purposes, the outline was of the barest possible kind. That does not mean that his preparation for the pulpit was scrappy; its true signification is that he was a man who made the study of God's Word his constant delight, and the correct interpretation of it his paramount interest. (G.N.M. Collins, John Macleod, DD, Edinburgh, 1951, pp71-2)