I noticed this post on a blog that I try to read each day on my lunch break. Max McClean is an actor who happens to be a Christian. Max has an extraordinary gift for memorizing long portions of Scripture. He is currently acting from memory the Gospel According to Mark at the Mercury Theatre in Chicago. I loved what Max said in an interview with Justin Taylor:
Do you have any counsel for those who want to grow in their ability to memorize Scripture and to retell it with integrity and creativity?
“That’s an interesting question because my friend Warren Bird and I have written a book entitled, Unleashing the Word: Rediscovering the Public Reading of Scripture, that will be published by Zondervan this fall. It does not deal with my major theatrical productions but how churches can elevate the scripture reading to a central moment in the worship experience. Of course integrity and creativity are key elements of the process.
As for memorizing scripture, it works best for me if memorization is a byproduct of meditation. Certainly it is an objective to memorize the text. But the act of memorizing the text can be hollow if it is not a result of deep meditation. When I actively interact and engage with a text there is a conversation going on between the words I’m looking at on a page and my heart and soul. Of course that is the primary way the Holy Spirit works in our lives. The result is that the text starts speaking to me. As a result I find myself knowing the words of the text and how they fit together very well. The final act of memorizing becomes much easier.
Of course to keep it in your heart and head requires that you revisit that text regularly or you might lose it. When I’m doing a presentation and I go “dry” or forget my place, I usually stop and say to the audience something like, “You know when you hide God’s word in your heart, sometimes you can’t find it!” I usually get a pretty big laugh after that. They start to think, “Oh, he’s human after all.”
The two points that Max made that were phenomenal to me were two truths:
1. Scripture Memory has to be a byproduct of meditation.
2. The reading of Scripture publically is the pinnacle of corporate worship.
