How do you measure Sermon Length?

Posted on January 25, 2010
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(78) comments

What do you think of this quote: "Sermon length is not measured in minutes; it is measured in minutes-beyond-interest, in the amount of time the minister continues to preach after he has lost the interest of his hearers."

That's from a book entitled "Why Johnny Can't Preach" (by T. David Gordon). JD Greear shares this quote on his blog recently.

Gordon continues:

Some preaching is so bad that the best we can say about some preachers is that they themselves realize it, and are merciful in the length of their sermons (ouch!). By contrast, I've heard ministers whose sermons I was disappointed to have come to an end. These entire sermons had been so well delivered--so thoughtful, so faithful to the text without being pedantic... so well-organized as to appear seamless, so challenging and nourishing to my soul--that I just didn't want the experience to end."

What do YOU think? How do you measure the length of your sermons?

My 2 cents: Very few preachers have the communication skills to go over 30 minutes. Very few. Unless you're Andy Stanley, is it really necessary to take 50 minutes to bring home your point? (I realize this may open a can of worms, but seriously, most sermons would be 100x better if you wacked them in half. And the thing is... you don't have to cut that much content... just choose it more wisely. Am I wrong?)

Love to hear your comments...

Todd

Comments

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Doug on Mon, January 25, 2010

Wow - this has been one of the ongoing tensions I feel at our church as I teach. There are many aspsects to consider:

1. Can/should God’s word be put on a clock?

2. The short attention span of our culture. (It’s real…)

3. My need to get it all out. (not good - but true)

4. The endurance of our children’s ministry teams. (Every minute over the “hour” our services run is like 10 minutes to them. Pastors can lose volunteers by abusing time.)

When we started our church (12 years ago) we were ‘to the minute’ - 1 hour max. We would start on time and hope to end early.

Yesterday we were over the hour by 15 minutes… I take direct responsibility for 10 of those extra minutes. The rest was on the drama/arts. We are now (if I’m honest) running about 7 - 10 min over each week.

I never hear complaints (concern for children’s workers, that I do hear). But maybe people are afraid to tell me.

However, I feel I need to tighten up… one change has been that I’ve moved away from notes. I am communicating better… but I am running longer.
Wyeth Duncan on Mon, January 25, 2010

First of all, I am not currently a pastor, but I have been an assistant pastor (and hope to return to pastoral ministry one day, God willing), and still preach on occasion. I’ve long had a great interest in the subject of preaching.

Believing that the preacher, in effect, speaks a message from God, I honestly do not think it is right to set a time limit on preaching. It seems to me that setting a time limit on the sermon is equivalent to setting a time limit on God—a type of quenching the Spirit. To borrow from John Piper, I believe that many people today downplay preaching (or set 20-25 minute time limits) because they’ve never heard true preaching delivered in the power of the Holy Spirit.

By no means do I want to minimize the value of study, thorough preparation and cutting out all unnecessary content. But, if the preacher is, indeed, a godly man, and has truly gotten his message from the Lord (i.e., he has bathed his time of study and preparation in earnest prayer with conscious dependence upon the Spirit of God), it seems almost sinful to insist “now, you preach only for this length of time, and no longer.”

Personally, I’ve preached as short as 10 minutes (for a wedding) and as long as 75 minutes (and, yes, I thought the 75 minutes was much too long and have no desire to do that again). 40-50 minutes has usually felt about right for me and, to the best of my knowledge, I’ve not lost my audience when I’ve stayed within that range of time.
Rich Schmidt on Mon, January 25, 2010

Just a quick note to those (like Steve) who are tempted to compare preaching time to the length of a movie or TV show—You’re right that people can pay attention for more than 20 minutes. And you’re right that it has to do with delivery.

That’s why movie makers spend millions of dollars so that hundreds of people can put months of work into create a compelling experience that will keep people’s attention for 2 hours. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of budget, time, or help for my weekly messages.

But with God’s help, and a few committed volunteers, we are able to lead people in a 1-hour worship experience, 20-30 minutes of which is “sermon time.” And that seems to work pretty well for the people in our mission field, so far.
RevJay on Mon, January 25, 2010

The comments are great. I love this forum. Good examples and plenty to think about. I do believe that the message should dictate the amount of time spent preaching. I think when I teach, I tend to put limits on the time and hang to that, but as the apostle Paul spoke until the wee hours in the morning, and the young man falling asleep and falling out the window (as God planned it) is the great example for today. Don’t kill ‘em with more than they can stand!
Eric on Mon, January 25, 2010

I agree that it is not all about length of time, but I have found that it is always more difficult to clearly communicate my point in less than 20 minutes than it is in 30 minutes. I belive the best teaching I do is when I can communicate the truth God would have me communicate in as short a talk as possible. However, I usually go closer to 30 minutes, so obvious I’m not doing as effective a job as I wish I was!

My college speech course taught me two things I’ve never forgotten—Clarity and Brevity are the marks of a great communicator.
Peter Hamm on Mon, January 25, 2010

steve baker writes [I�m wondering�if you had only one chance to preach Jesus to someone, would you put a time limit on how much you have to say?]

I wonder, if you had only one chance to preach Jesus to someone, and you knew or strongly suspected that if you exceeded a certain amount of time your message would not get across, would you have the good sense to do it within the time that you knew or strongly suspected it would get across?

Delivery is very important, you are right, but long sermons are, in my experience, rarely delivered well.
Kevin Womack on Mon, January 25, 2010

Amen!!! My feeling is that the majority of communicators who choose to preach beyond the 30 minute mark simply haven’t finished preparing their message! They’ve researched the text but forgotten to do the homiletical work… shaping it into a compelling sermon. Without the homiletical work, these sermons sound a lot like someone reading from their favorite commentary. God has called preachers to more than that!
BB on Mon, January 25, 2010

I was taught a great lesson by a mentor: Say less, making them wish you had said more, rather than saying more and making them wish you had said less.
David on Mon, January 25, 2010

I think sermons should be 20 to 25 min. 30 min Should be a max. I think it’s harder to fit write a 25 min. talk because you can’t dance around the point.
Attention spans are getting shorter not longer.
I start looking at my watch after 30 min with even the best speakers I’ve heard.
Mason Stanley on Mon, January 25, 2010

Usually don’t post comments on blogs (second time i’ve written that today, hope it doesn’t become a habit) but, this is an issue i’ve been discussing with my team.

Since it was opened with 2 cents I’ll throw mine in as well. If you can’t clearly communicate what needs to be said in 30 minutes or less you are info overloading. Don’t get me wrong, I understand being led by the Holy Spirit and communicating what God has for your listeners to hear. Reality is we add things to our sermons that are not inspired by God hoping to drive God’s point home.

If your sermon is the only place where your people get fed their main meals so you feel you must go longer, you are doing your people a great dis-service by cultivating that culture with in your community.
Brent on Mon, January 25, 2010

It’s interesting to read the article and comments and see the “sermon-centric” attitude of most people in the church. It seems that most people believe that the sermon is the only part of the service where people receive God’s word.. The music, scripture reading, litanies, and sacraments are just as important, if not more, than the sermon. I believe many churches would be much more effective if they’d get the pastor out of the way and rely on God to speak in many ways, not just through the sermon.

I do regularly preach 30 minutes (trying to go less), but I try and break the sermon up with videos, drama, songs, prayers, etc. so that the people don’t begin to think it’s more about what I have to say than experiencing God. The reason people watch movies for 2 hours is because there are multiple things going on (music, action, efx, story, cineamtography). Try and market a movie of even the greatest speaker on earth just standing up and talking for 2 hours, I guarantee it would be a flop.
Wyeth Duncan on Mon, January 25, 2010

Brent said, “It seems that most people believe that the sermon is the only part of the service where people receive God�s word. The music, scripture reading, litanies, and sacraments are just as important, if not more, than the sermon. I believe many churches would be much more effective if they�d get the pastor out of the way and rely on God to speak in many ways, not just through the sermon.”

I think Brent’s comments touch on what is the crux of the matter: Do we believe the sermon is central to corporate worship or not? Clearly, music, Scripture readings, sacraments, etc. are all elements of worship, as is the sermon, but, in my view, it is only through the reading and exposition of Scripture that God speaks. I also believe the model we see in the book of Acts demonstrates that the preaching of God’s word is very much central to corporate worship, and preaching is a key element in the birth, growth and spread of the church.

If preaching is that important to the life of the church (and, based on the biblical record, I believe it is), then it deserves time. And, I genuinely believe (and have experienced) that the Holy Spirit can overrule the general societal trend toward shorter attention spans.
Rob on Mon, January 25, 2010

It’s all about content and presentation. I know this will be hard to believe but on a missions trip to the Dominican Republic I took our youth group to listen to a preacher who preached for over 3 hours (TRUE STORY), and although the teens had to hear the sermon through a translator (spanish to english) they were engaged from beginning to end.

And til this day (almost 5 years later) I , and most of the students, still remember that the message was based on Ecclesiastes 10:1. “As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.”
Charles E. WHisnant on Mon, January 25, 2010

Charles Standley goes 45 plus. John MacArthur goes 55 minutes I beleive they do great. Charles Spurgeon,

But if the deacons are giving out refunds then you need to cut down on the minutes
David on Mon, January 25, 2010

I remember a teacher in college saying “sermonettes make Christianettes”