15 Minute "Quickie" Church Service is Increasing Attendance

15 Minute “Quickie” Church Service is Increasing Attendance

Posted on March 11, 2010
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(26) comments

OK... hows about we open a huge can of worms? In Ireland, a Catholic priest has changed his morning mass from 9 a.m. to 7:30 a.m., taken out the sermon, and reduced the time of the service to just 15 minutes. What if a church in the US did this?

Here's the typical church service in the US:

1. 20 minutes of worship

2. 5 minutes of announcements

3. 5 minutes of offering

4. 40 minutes of sermon

In the past 20 years, we've changed up everything about our worship services. We've changed our worship style, who were targeting. We've changed our programs, our focus. We're even letting people drink coffee in the 'sanctuary' and wearing jeans to worship. But one thing has not changed: The length of the sermon.

And I'm not saying it should. I'm just saying that the one thing that has not changed is the length at which we try to capture people's attention.

Where else (other than a college classroom) do we in our society sit and listen passively to one person talk for any longer than 15 minutes?

Am I advocating shorter sermons, or no sermons at all? No. I'm just asking the question: How did we come to the time that we use for our message? And why do we guard it as passionately as we do the Bible in many instances?

Having produced two online conferences recently (THE NINES and AHA!), I've come to realize that a good, well tailored message can be done in six minutes.

Seriously. Six minutes.

Six minutes is really ample time to present an idea and a call to action.

Why is that? Because that's how much time we gave the speakers. "You have six minutes". And each and every one of them delivered.

What if your board gave you SIX MINUTES per Sunday for the next month. I bet you would make it work.

Here's what six minutes would do for you:

1. It would cut the fluff. About 35 minutes of it.

2. It would cut the repetitiveness. You'd make your point and move on.

3. It would up you passion. You have to fit everything in in six minutes. You would only talk about what your passionate about.

4. It would increase your intensity. All of a sudden, you HAVE to communicate what you need to very quickly with great intensity.

My guess is that each and every one of you could do it. If you had to. In fact, the end result might surprise you. (It would definitely surprise your church).

Present a nugget of truth in six minutes with a call to action? Yes, I think it can be done.

Will it ever be done? No. Because too many pastors like to preach. Many would rather take time over quality.

Again, I'm not advocating we all switch to 6 minutes sermons. Not at all.

I guess the question I'm asking is: Why do you speak the length you speak? Is it because it takes you that long to say what you need to say, or because you have that much time to fill?

It seems to me that the former should be driving our sermon length, not the latter.

For what it's worth, those are my thoughts. What do YOU think?

(Don't worry, I'm wearing my full body armor this today, so have at it!)

Todd

Comments

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Dee on Thu, March 11, 2010

if 6 minutes is too short, then what is the optimum sermon length and why?

I do agree that it has way more to do with quality than quantity. A 70 minute movie that sucks is just as bad as a 3 hour movie that sucks.
Randy Willis on Fri, March 12, 2010

I think the value here is more about cutting out the fluff than it is about setting a specific time frame (i.e., 6 minutes). The fluff detracts from the point/big idea anyway.

Not sure I agree with Will that “Sermon length is mostly about spiritual appetite and interest.” That’s part of it but it might have more to do with how focused and engaging the communicator is.

In other words, I like to watch movies (appetite and interest), but I prefer to watch good ones.

Even with The Nines and Aha! not all 6 or 9 minute segments were equal. For some, 6 minutes wasn’t long enough, for others, it was long enough. Same with sermons.

Good discussion!
tim on Fri, March 12, 2010

Why stop there? If communicating the very words of God (arguably the most important thing to communicate in the world) can be done effectively in 6 minutes, then surely a blog should be no more than 140 characters (twitter). I think it might be time to give up our blogs. And then all the Leadership Network books…those would be WAY over-worded…they need to be shortened to pamphlets because isn’t a book just a very long explanation of one primary thing?

Seriously though, all of us should be reviewing our communication methods, no matter what the medium, to make sure we are not just filling time or space. If anything deserves a longer explanation though, it’s the Word of God.
Dee on Fri, March 12, 2010

well, Twitter is growing faster than blogs!
CS on Fri, March 12, 2010

Dee:

“well, Twitter is growing faster than blogs!”

And you know how it goes in modern American evangelical Christendom. If it’s growing, God must be blessing it.

—
CS
xofweber on Sun, March 14, 2010

Quickies can be good. Really good, even! But if all you have are “quickies” I’m guessing something’s amiss. Whether in making love or in preaching love, I’m not sure that duration is always the most important measure of success . I’ve heard really great long sermons and really terrible long sermons. And I’ve heard really great short sermons and really terrible short sermons. The advantage of short sermons is that if you don’t like them, you don’t have to put up with them for very long—whether your the preacher or the listener. But is the most important measure of a sermon whether people “liked it?” There are many people who love the weekly uplifting smiley dribble of certain preachers—whether they preach for 15 minutes or for 50 minutes. But is the measure of success when it comes to preaching whether people “liked” the sermon? I seem to recall that some of Jesus’ most powerful sermons were the one’s that people hated enough to want to kill him afterwards. I don’t know if anyone’s reacted to one of my sermons that way, but I recently had a church member tell me that she was probably just going to start staying home to watch the “really smiley preacher” (that’s my nickname for him, not hers) because she likes him better anyways.” Her words were hard to hear. Partly because yes, I do have an ego that can be bruised. But mainly it hurt that she was more interested in being entertained than exhorted and equipped. But the bottom line is that I wish I could say more, more effectively, in less time. I have to remind myself that there’s always next week! I don’t have to say everything this week! But I’m really tempted sometime to just get up and preach a parable—maybe just memorize one of Jesus’s parables and recite it from memory—and then sit down. No explanations. Sort of like Jesus—but then, was he preaching or teaching when he did that? Wouldn’t that be a powerful sermon?! But my guess is that while most people start looking at their watches at about the 20 minute mark that those same folks would complain to me or about me if that is all I did ... but there goes my ego again worrying about how people would complain. But the same people that want shorter sermons are the same people that generally want the sermons to begin with a couple of jokes or funny stories, have three point alliteration, and end with some clear-cut, cookie cutter, application points that make the passage “relevant” for daily living. How in the heck can you do that in 6 minutes, let alone 10, 15, or 20?! I suppose you do it by not looking at more than a cherry picked verse, ignoring its context, not plumbing its depths, or exploring its breadth ... let alone, not looking at how that verse might be better understood by considering it in the light of other parts of scripture. I think what has happened is that some folks have decided that there is no overlap between preaching and teaching ... that preaching should just encourage or incite or catalyze people in a certain direction and that somehow (at some other time or in some other setting) people will receive the teaching they need in order to flesh out the moving and eloquent words of a good “preacher.” But the risk is that sermons then become little more than “pep talks” or more akin to the motivational words of a coach at half-time, than substantive, challenging, provocative, transformative messages. That said, if I could do all that in a quickie sermon, I might feel right about it. And heck, it would leave more time for announcements! But darn it, I’m just not good enough of a preacher to do that yet.
John Cummings on Tue, March 16, 2010

I grew up Catholic, and we had an Irish priest who could do 7 a.m. daily mass in about 12 minutes. Obviously there was no sermon, but we did have the eucharist - the real heart of the Catholic service. Looking back I’m torn between laughter and tears.
Dee on Tue, March 16, 2010

“And you know how it goes in modern American evangelical Christendom. If it�s growing, God must be blessing it.”

Sometimes growth IS a sign of God’s blessing. But probably not with Twitter.

I’m just saying that communication methods have changed throughout history to fit the culture and we shouldn’t be afraid of doing it again.
Jade on Tue, March 16, 2010

I check out after 15 to 20 minutes. I think the a pastor can go over that but I think the norm should be 15 to 20 minutes. After that I don’t care how interesting you are the young people have check out.
Ted Carnahan on Fri, March 26, 2010

Another Lutheran here. Typical sermons around these parts run 10-15 minutes, precisely for the attention span reasons mentioned in the article. At the risk of making broad generalities, our sermons tend to be more focused on proclamation and less on teaching, though.

We generally talk about pastors responsibilities as “Word and Sacrament” - Word being preaching, Scripture, and the parts of the liturgy connected to those elements (hymnody, anthems, prayer), and Sacrament of course being baptism and holy communion. The idea is to seek balance between the elements of the service, so that one part doesn’t minimize the others. That doesn’t lead us so much to a particular time limit as to a contextual awareness of what will work with a particular congregation.
Lisa Smith (@stretchmarkmama) on Wed, March 31, 2010

Oh, you know I’d love a church with a six-minute sermon.

TED talks are another great example of getting the point across in a short amount of time.

If someone came to my house and talked for 40 minutes while I sat mute in one spot, I’d feel trapped and annoyed. Not sure why the laypeople in churchianity still show up for the talking head—but I’m guessing it has something to do with the iPhone.