Cleophus LaRue edited a book entitled Preaching in the Pulpit: How America’s Most Effective Black Preachers Prepare Their Sermons.. In the book he gives 11 characteristics of the methodologies of these great preachers. The first of these is that Black Preachers have a “Skillfull Articulation of the Living Voice.”

The key here is that the sermon is not written out. A sermon manuscript is not a sermon, a sermon is always the “performed activity.” The spoken word has power in this community. The preacher should always keep in mind that the sermon is an aural event when the preacher is constructing the sermon manuscript.