Extemporaneous preaching is a style of preaching that was popular in the late 19th century among Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 (Primitive Baptist

Primitive Baptist

Primitive Baptists, also known as Hard Shell Baptists or Anti-Mission Baptists, are conservative, Calvinist Baptists adhering to beliefs that formed out of the controversy among Baptists in the early 1800’s over the appropriateness of mission boards, bible tract societies, and temperance...

 especially), Methodist, Unitarian

Unitarianism

Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....

, and some Presbyterians preachers, such as Blackleach Burritt

Blackleach Burritt

Blackleach Burritt was a preacher during the American Revolutionary War. During the American War of Independence, he was incarcerated in the Sugar House Prison-Early life and ancestors:...

. Some of the more famous preacher

Preacher

Preacher is a term for someone who preaches sermons or gives homilies. A preacher is distinct from a theologian by focusing on the communication rather than the development of doctrine. Others see preaching and theology as being intertwined...

s who employed it were Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Charles Grandison Finney

Charles Grandison Finney

Charles Grandison Finney was a leader in the Second Great Awakening. He has been called The Father of Modern Revivalism. Finney was best known as an innovative revivalist, an opponent of Old School Presbyterian theology, an advocate of Christian perfectionism, a pioneer in social reforms in favor...

 and Peter Cartwright

Peter Cartwright (exhorter)

Peter Cartwright was an American Methodist revivalist and politician in Illinois. Born in Amherst County, Virginia, Cartwright was a missionary who helped start the Second Great Awakening and personally baptized twelve thousand converts. He settled in Illinois. He lost against Abraham Lincoln...

.

The style is not to be confused with impromptu preaching

Impromptu preaching

Impromptu preaching is a sermon technique where the preacher exhorts the congregation without any previous preparation. It can be aided with a reading of a Bible passage, alleatory opened or not, or even without any scriptural reference....

; it involves much preparation. One prepares by dwelling on the subject continually and thus has something to say when the time comes.

The first thing to be observed is, that the student who would acquire facility in this art, should bear it constantly in mind, and have regard to it in all his studies and in his whole mode of study. -Henry Ware, Jr.

On the other hand, it is distinct from memorized

Memorization

Memorization is the process of committing something to memory. The act of memorization is often a deliberate mental process undertaken in order to store in memory for later recall items such as experiences, names, appointments, addresses, telephone numbers, lists, stories, poems, pictures, maps,...

preaching. Proponents claim that the importance of preaching demands it be extemporaneous.

A reflecting mind will feel as if it were infinitely out of place to present in the pulpit to immortal souls, hanging upon the verge of everlasting death, such specimens of learning and rhetoric. -Charles Finney

Extemporaneous preaching includes both preaching with no written preparation as well as brief notes for the purpose of ordering points.

The disadvantages of such a style is the trade-off of precision for emotional emphasis.