What is the trend? Are church members and church leaders saying sermons should be longer or shorter? The answer is “yes.”
If my answer is confusing, I understand. But the reality is there are two major trends taking place related to sermon length. I have been following these trends through anecdotal information and social media polls for three years. There are growing numbers of respondents who believe sermons should be longer. There are also growing numbers of respondents who believe sermons should be shorter. And there aren’t many people in the middle of those two divergent views.
By the way, there is a smaller, but consistent, number that feel the pastor should preach “as long or short as God leads” with no constraints at all. That view is the third of the three perspectives.
I am reticent to put my numbers in statistical percentages since my social media polls of the past three years are not scientific. Since numbers, however, can provide greater clarity, I list them here with the caveat that the accuracy is definitely not precise.
- 41%: Sermons should be shorter, in the 20 to 30 minute range. These respondents see a cultural barrier related to short attention spans. Any sermon over 30 minutes, they say, does not connect with the typical mind of today, especially in Western culture. We, therefore, must keep the message shorter and pack more information into a relatively brief time period.
- 37%: Sermons should be longer, in the 35 to 55 minute range. A solid exposition of Scripture, this perspective argues, cannot be done in just a few minutes. The sermon is the central part of the worship service, and the time allocated should be significant. We do a disservice to the Word of God when we move toward shorter sermons.
- 9%: There should be no time constraints on the pastor’s sermons. The pastor should have a sermon length that is only subject to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Anything else lacks sensitivity to God’s work and involvement.
Obviously, if you add the numbers, another 13% had a variety of responses that fit none of the categories. By way, some of the responses in my most recent social media poll and in previous polls advocated sermon lengths from 8 minutes to 75 minutes. We church members definitely are not in full agreement on these issues.
What do you think of the two trends moving in opposite directions? One group is advocating longer sermons; the other group embraces the shorter sermon. Let me hear your thoughts on this issue.
Posted on July 30, 2014
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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153 Comments
Put me with the 9% … It should be Holy Spirit driven. A sermon can be 10 minutes, it can be an hour or longer. It’s his call.
At my old church, a gentleman told me sermons should never be longer than 15-20 minutes. I told him that he would have been a big downer at the Sermon of the Mount. He smiled =)
I think it all depends on what people think the point of a sermon is. Information? (No) Persuasion? (Rarely) Motivation (usually)
Education today is not about the correct information, pastors are not the repository of information, that’s what the Internet, DVD’s, and eBooks are for. Today, education is teaching people how to ask the right questions, how to think (biblically, for Christians)
Sometimes we want to draw clear lines and persuade that (for example) Jesus is divine, the cross is our only hope, abortion/homosexuality (etc.) are indeed sins…
Mostly we need to motivate.
We need humor, wimsey, powerful images, and the right message boiled down to just enough for the hearers at that time.
Guess who does this well? TED talks.
For many reasons, they have an 18 minute cap, and I think (unless your church is counter-cultural ‘bubble Christians’ who don’t engage the real world) we should think about that.
20 min is plenty of time to explain, illustrate, and apply a text’s MAIN POINT. The rest is gibberish.
The pushback is “how can you cover everything in a text in 20 min”
My response to that: “how long do you think it takes to adequately cover a text? In my Advanced Greek Grammar class we’d routinely spend 4 hours on half a chapter… Is that practical?”
This is coming from, honestly, immature people who believe their primary Biblical intake is the sermon every Sunday. This is how we have people littered all over the place who think homosexuals can’t get saved, drinking alcohol is a sin, and only perverts dance. By the way, the Baptist Hymnal 1956 and KJV Bible 1611 are the last sacred books we have.
Sad. Preach for effect.
“Teaching them to observe (do)” Matt 28:20
TED talk speakers more than likely spend weeks on presenting to that audience. Communicating clearly and at that high of a level is easier said than done. Especially when most pastors are “pastoring” way more than they are preaching. I would agree that we should learn from TED speakers on communication though.
I think it depends on the orator’s ability to write succinctly and not repeat themselves. I get frustrated listening to sermons that drone on and run a point into the ground when I got it the first time. However, there may be those listeners that need a repetitive reinforcement. I don’t know. I prefer meaty, shorter sermons rather than long, fluffy ones. But I don’t like short fluffy ones, either. As long as a sermon keeps me engaged and introduces me to valuable material, I can listen. But I think most people stop listening after about 20 minutes and their mind wanders. You’re not engaging them anyway. Still, the Holy Spirit is timeless so there’s that. It’s definitely an art form of sorts. And some folks are just better at it than others.
Many liturgical churches utilize shorter sermons because they believe God is also speaking through other aspects of the service, such as Scripture readings and the Lord’s Supper.
If you’re preaching 45+ minutes, listen to your sermon and cut out the stand up comedy routine, the extended illustration, and the Greek words and then see what’s left. Maybe you believe your audience needs that stuff, but you might be surprised how much they appreciate getting to the point.
Most homilies are one point long. Usually translatable into “Start doing this”, or “Stop doing that”.
Whether that is because liturgical churches follow a lectionary, and it is rare for two or more points to be found in all readings, or because longer sermons cause a proportionally longer service,I do not know.
However, that advice is supported by the gospel portion. Hence, Jesus himself was teaching his followers the same thing.
Hi Thom. Good post. However, whilst many have talked about the skills required of the preacher in order to dictate length, I can’t help but wonder if we are missing something here about the Christian in the congregation and their responsibility to tune in to what is being preached. In other words, if we would call ourselves disciples then we should want to hear what our Master is saying through the sermon, regardless of who is preaching and for how long. Peter tells us to ‘crave’ spiritual milk. Jesus said man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Apart from the preacher then and despite what we might think of his sermon, is our primary focus concentrated on receiving what God wants to say to us during today’s message? If not, perhaps we have an unhealthy fixation on being entertained by the abilities of today’s speaker – or the lack of them?
I have found that the younger crowd including “seekers” of knowledge and truth are the people who want the sermons to be longer. The older crowd, most of whom grew up in church, want the sermons shorter. I believe this has more to do with tradition and expectations than anything else. The seekers are not bound by tradition and have no expectations of what church, including the length of the sermon, should be. Those who have been in church all their lives have grown up in a culture where church ended at noon. If it did not end at noon then the preacher preached too long. I remember growing up in church and hearing complaints from many adults any time the sermon went past noon, even less than 5 minutes. Church culture is powerful. Anyone who has served in ministry is acutely aware of just how powerful. Perhaps this is why there are these two divergent trends showing up in the research.
And when church did not get out at noon, people did not get in the front of the line at the country club brunch. This was in the south where communion came after the sermon. There once was a guest preacher who was interviewing in a church of Christ on the Sunday of Mother’s Day, when the local country club had a brunch which was quite posh. The interviewing cofC preacher went long, the Baptists, meanwhile, cut theirs a little short and the Methodists weren’t having communion that Sunday so theirs was short too. The cofC wound up in the back of the line at brunch. That fellow interviewing was not getting the position even if his name had been St. Paul.
Oh my goodness this makes me laugh.
While I understand what the advocates of number 3 are saying, I always think back to what a very wise and respected preaching professor told our class. “The Holy Spirit works on Tuesdays, too.”
The one part of the sermon that no one has mentioned yet is the altar call, or invitation. Sometimes the invitation starts halfway through the sermon. Other times it is tacked on the end. Some churches do not have them at all. Some bishops offer them once a year on confirmation Sunday. When the invitation starts and goes on for 10 minutes or so, people used to and may still pick up the song book and be ready to sing. One loud preacher who shall remain nameless noticed that most people in the crowd (avg age 21) had their song books out flipping through them. Then he took his own song book, beat on the lectern with it and asked “did I say you could take the song books out?” There was more commotion as the books were returned to the racks. People then started doing everything under the sun but left the books alone.
I think the key is to leave people motivated by God’s Word and wanting more. I often gauge the people in my church when my sermons run longer than 35 minutes to see if it was too long to them. As long as I am hearing they were moved and did not realize it was that long I’m okay. Also I have tried to follow the Holy Spirit’s prompting when I need to end a sermon at a point long before my outline is finished! It’s unfortunate when, through pride, we insist on blazing through the whole outline when the Spirit may be prompting to tell us He already communicated what needed communicated and that moment is ripe for a response time! Let’s be committed to prepare well so we can preach well!
I feel longer sermons are helpful since most people only attend one teaching time per week. When churches had Sunday School, Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night there were a lot more minutes of teaching!
We are in our 50’s but attend a church where the majority are in their 20’s and 30’s. Out pastor usually preaches between 55-75 minutes. The entire service usually runs from 10:00 to 11:45, but many people hang around chatting until 12:15.
How does the structure of the morning service play into this? In most Baptist churches I’ve attended the order of service is pretty much the same each week almost to the point of being ritualistic. So much time alloted for muisc, taking up the offering, announcements, the sermon …etc. The time alloted for preaching remains constant and most pastors feel if they change up the service it will upset people who mostly tend to be creatures of habit . If the preacher has a lot of content he wants to present he either crams it into the alloted time or stretches it out into two sermons. Personally I’ver heard 20 minute sermons that just seemed to drag on and I’ve heard hour long sermons in which the time seemed to fly by.
I really think this may depend on the preacher and his ability and also the text. I’ve heard preachers who could keep you going with them for an hour. Others I was looking at the watch wondering when it will be over after ten minutes. As a preacher, and to be fair, there are plenty of times where I want to keep going and times when I want myself to stop! I’m sure the gift of the pastor, what kind of week he had, his audience, their maturity, and plenty of other things are weigh into how one would answer.
Also the text dictates the length. Pauline epistles are notoriously difficult for me but narratives of Jesus are much easier. Paul’s writings are so interwoven so I have the necessity of unwrapping before enjoying whats inside. Some passages are simply straight forward and others you have to dissect and plenty in between.