LifeWay Research is meddling again with a survey on sermon length.
Great work guys. Now it’s confirmed that most pew-sitters prefer a sermon of 20-40 minutes. Personally, I have sat in churches and listened to sermons both short and long that robbed me of 20-40 good minutes. That string of jokes, stories, and guffaw-bait probably didn’t even qualify for being called a “sermon.”
Adrian Rogers would preach over forty minutes and it was was too short.
I have preached twenty minute sermons that were probably fifteen minutes too long.
My informal survey reveals that most pastors are preaching shorter sermons online that they did before a live audience. Universally, this is a pleasant result of our current crisis. Shorter sermons. Who would have thunk it?
Revival may indeed break out.
Why shorter sermons?
“Because I don’t want to chase rabbits if no one is there to watch,” said one of the seasoned brethren who, metaphorically, may have never seen an unchaseable rabbit.
Maybe because a live audience jacks the beloved pastor up to a level of longwindedness, soaring with either the golden eagles or the turkey vultures. Problem is, the brother diesn’t know the difference between the two. Maybe preaching to vacant pews or the back wall of your office just doesn’t tap that inner well of excessive exuberance.
Maybe because preaching in an empty room reminds God’s beloved herald that he is not in the entertainment business.
Maybe because the pastor has spent years educating the church family about how he needs to reserve and protect his time alone with God, in the study, wrestling with texts and conjugations and such things and now that a wider audience may hear him online he’s worried about someone finding out he steals most of his stuff. Now, his own unique sermonic creations are, well, much shorter.
My church is planning to start in-house services again in June. The social distancing needed means that the pastor will preach the same sermon four times. I bet the sermons stay short.
So…how’s it going for you? I’ll be glad for normality to return.
________________
Had a guy come in for a revival. He preached one of the best 15 minute sermons I’d ever heard. Problem was, the preached five of them at once. It didn’t get better as the week progressed.
We had a pastoral candidate warn us that a long sermon was coming because “sermonettes make Christianettes”. Very catchy although unprovable and incoherent. He wasn’t invited back.
I’m not a trained pastor but I do a lot of “between pastors” preaching. While I could easily shorten a prepared sermon, I’d have a hard time making it longer once I’ve begun.
The only clock was on the back wall of the balcony. I always used a voice recorder to record my sermons. I was always amazed how long I actually preached. One Sunday a small group from my previous congregation came to hear their old pastor. I must have been wound up. I preached 43 minutes!
One stat from the LifeWay survey was that in some cases more education meant shorter sermons.
I’m typically a 30-35 minute preacher. I have encountered very few preachers that can keep people interested much longer than that. I have encountered many more who think they can.
A short sermon in a non-narrative passage that is all content without illustrations is less effective than a somewhat longer sermon (but not too long) in same passage with appropriate, interesting illustrations that help story-wired people to actually learn the content. If you don’t illustrate, your losing some of your people whether you realize it or not.
As a teacher at university and some times preacher, I am still waiting to find the person who can “stay alert” for 30-35 minutes but can’t for 40-45. In other words, the people who claim they can do 30 but not 40 really lost it…. when the preacher started. They were out hunting in their mind, or at a football game, etc. Listening is a skill. Most don’t develop it and instead complain about the length of a sermon or a class. To listen well take notes and look up the verses. If you don’t do that, you aren’t listening… Read more »
Dr. Al Fasol taught me preaching at Southwestern Seminary. I’ll always be grateful for his teaching. One day in class, a student asked, “How long should a sermon be?” He answered, “Long enough.” He meant that a sermon should be long enough to do justice to the biblical text. I guess I’ve tried to follow that advice. I have sermons that last from 25 to 40 minutes, depending on the text. I’ve mainly taught missions, but I’ve taught preaching a few times. I hear a lot of sermons that last 45 minutes and seem like three sermons strung together. The… Read more »
Most of us preachers know that when people are watching a sermon on their Facebook on You Tube apps, we are competing with everything else on that app for their attention plus every other app on their phone plus everything else they could be doing around their house. They are no longer a “captive audience.” To be honest, I can’t sit still and watch or listen to a long sermon on a phone. I usually fall asleep. I always listen to sermons while I am doing something else – driving, walking to work, exercising, etc.
I have shortened to 30 minutes or less mainly because I have people viewing the LiveStream that I know are not attending church at all and I have been trying to be thoughtful of their time. Many of them are continuing to listen, so I will continue to LiveStream and keep sermons to 30 minutes or less for the immediate future, even after we begin to gather back in our facility.
I once preached a ten minute sermon and four people got saved in that service. I usually preach a 20 to 30 minute sermon, never over 30 minutes. When the Holy Spirit is finished I don’t keep going.
“When the Holy Spirit is finished I don’t keep going.” Great line!
From a Sunday school teacher . . . .
When I teach Sunday school, I target 25-30 minutes, and I hit that target about 85% of the time. Participation is generally a good thing when teaching, but it creates problems with timing.
I usually preach from 45-55 minutes, but on Mother’s Day, I preached for 1 hour 16 minutes. It was our first sermon back in the church building, so I warned them. Nobody seemed to mind.
William,
Great post, saw the Lifeway article, and immediately thought about how my preaching is evolving now that I am “ live streaming” on Facebook and posted on you tube. I think that people in general have a shorter attention span viewing online that in person. I suspect that some DMin student will do their dissertation on the shifts that are taking place in church life right now, attention spans being one of them. Not to mention the emotional disconnect between speaker and listener.
Not sure if revival will come of all of this.
Blessings in Christ
woody
Revival breaking out was…ahem…a bit of mild sarcasm. Shorter, more concise, succinct sermons certainly beats prattling on endlessly.
Dr. Adrian Rogers was my pastor for 10 years and very few of his 45 minutes sermons were long. I’ve had several other pastors whose sermons were so valuable that I never considered them long.
I’m a layman so I’m not versed in the mechanics of a attention-holding sermon. Maybe the resolution of this issue is for pastors to focus on the content of the sermon and not the length.
In a basic sermon preparation class in college, I was taught that if you want to preach effectively, put your main points and conclusion inside the first 15 minutes and wind it up with an illustration for the last 5-7. From stand up to sit down should take 25 minutes. The professor was an excellent preacher himself and when he went to a struggling local church as interim for 18 months, they went from a less than half full auditorium to two packed services on Sunday morning and a full house on Sunday night during the time he was there.… Read more »
With all due respect the last thing I want to hear is a 5-7 minute illustration. Give me Bible or shut it down. But that’s me.
The presupposition here is that all preachers are equal and have the same spiritual gifts. That is obviously not true. My thesis is anyone preaching should understand their gifts, their strengths, and their weaknesses, and then to preach to those gifts and strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Thee points and a poem, points and conclusion followed by an illustration, a 7 minute sermon, a 20 minute one, a 45 minute one–it depends entirely on what works for the individual AND what works for the congregation.
yep
Two thoughts. The first is this: the most effective, most have you talking about the sermon all week, most pithy and taught you the most and reached the most sermons we have heard were delivered by our circuit riding preacher a few years ago. 10 minutes each, at 12 minutes he would have been preaching up his driving time. And in our area health dept is discouraging any singing as churches slowly reopen. Worship wars are a thing of the past. BUT it is also becoming a matter of contention for the crowd that is just following the best band.… Read more »