With all due respect to those thinking that lengthy preaching is better, I think it all depends on who you are preaching to. Asking for feedback from key leaders says to me that you are preaching to the choir, as they say. What if there are lost people in your church? Do we care whether or not they get the point(s)?

So the fundamental question is, “Who are our services for?” If I can be brutally honest, if preaching to the choir worked, we would all be in heaven now. The choir has come to believe that spiritual growth happens at church on Sundays when the pastor is talking. It doesn’t. I might learn something but the growth actually happens when I put it into practice.

I have heard people that sit under great teachers, go to seminars, have several translations of the Bible and a book shelf full of Christian books say that they are starving spiritually. The problem isn’t the content on Sunday mornings being too light. The problem is thinking that maturity is measured by knowledge and that I’ll serve, love and give when my knowledge is complete enough. And it never is quite there. Pastors are to teach in order to equip for service not teach lofty ideas for the sake of knowledge. Eph. 4

The other day, my pastor said something to the effect that ‘we need to stop talking about reaching the community and start doing it.’

I was wracking my brain trying to remember when he and I had EVER talked about reaching the community and then I realized he was talking about his preaching, so apparently ‘we’ was the ‘we’ that pastors use when referring to themselves in the third person.

I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t part of the ‘we’ who was going to have to reach the community.  (whew!  close call)

Anthony,

You don’t have to cram it in, just talk about one big idea, and the Holy Spirit will worry about all the other details. The one thing that is hardest for us is to remember that we don’t have to teach EVERY thing EVERY week, isn’t it…

Read “Communicating for a Change” by Andy Stanley. It will help immensely.

anthony, being a youth pastor is great if you are called to it, the youth needs the word too, but like ed dean said, it is what you do with what you got/know, if they are teens get them out doing somthing for the community, teach them how to minister to peoples needs, they need to feel needed too. and not “just the youth group”

Hey, everybody,

Nobody’s answered Wyeth’s questions.  He asked, “does the Holy Spirit have the power to attract and hold the attention of an audience, even for 30+ minutes?” By advocating a philosophy of “the shorter the sermon, the better”, aren’t we in a way minimizing the power of the word of God when preached in the power of the Spirit of God to change lives?  Preaching is biblical, after all.  I’m not saying sermons have to be an hour or more in length, but what is wrong with going over 30 minutes if the verse or passage you’re preaching calls for it?

Speaking of the Holy Spirit: Wayne, you said, “I don’t let the church dictate the style of our ministry, I let the Holy Spirit guide me and my team in that.” How, exactly, does the Holy Spirit guide you and your team?  I ask because I sincerely want to know.  Thanks.

Anthony,

Peter has some good advice. Focus on one point and trust the Holy Spirit to cover the rest.

I was a youth pastor for five years before becoming the “real” pastor. I preached once every two months in big church, which gave me eight weeks to study for one message. I crammed so much info into those message that most people were lost.

I think it is much more difficult to preach shorter messages. It requires much more work in the preparation end. I preach with a series, but it is still a challenge to cut the fat and hone things down.

I would encourage you to work on that when you have a chance to preach in big church. Youth pastors are real pastors and all the skills I learned in youth ministry carried over to ministry with adults. Adults are just over grown teens anyway!

Blessings,

Derek

Having being a Youth Pastor for many years, and having been a Senior Pastor for many years, the teaching of the Word is as important in both position. 

The primary purpose of the Teaching Pastor is to study and know and proclaim the Word of God to the people of God.

Are your people smarter than fifth graders? then preach and teach on a level above that grade. Do not look down on adults or youth as not smart enough to understand the Word of God.

In truth the only way any of us can understand the thoughts of Christ is by the Holy Spirit.  The simplest of sermons can not be understood spiritually by our natural minds, but only by the Holy Spirit.

A sermon 29 minutes or 55 minutes can only be effective by the the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of those whom the Word is going forth.

You should not try in your own wisdom, and craftness of speech try to craft a sermon that is going to reach the people.  Unless the Lord opens their heart and mind, it will be as “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

If we say we want to be led by the Holy Spirit in our speech and and message, why would we worry that if the Holy Spirit led us to preach two hours, that the Spirit would also lead those whom we preach to listen for two hours.

Holy Spirit preaching will be received as Holy Spirit preaching.

Charles

Charles said, “You should not try in your own wisdom, and craftness of speech try to craft a sermon that is going to reach the people. Unless the Lord opens their
heart and mind, it will be as ‘sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal’.”

I thoroughly agree.

It just seems to me that we can, unintentionally, fall into the trap of trusting our methodology more than the Spirit of God.  I think our desire to be relevant reflects, perhaps, a loss of confidence in the inherent power of Scripture.  Please understand, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with 20-minute messages.  But, it’s not a crime to preach one hour, either.  That’s all I mean.

Finally, Wayne Hanson said, “140 new converts due to the 29-minute-message in 2007 alone.  Hard to argue with fruit gentlemen.”

Well, I guess it depends on what kind of “fruit” we’re talking about.  I know of plenty large, vibrant and growing churches that win their converts through the teaching of patently false doctrine (so-called “prosperity"/"health and wealth” teaching).  What do those numbers prove?  That a whole lot of people are gullible?  Numbers and professed conversions are never infallible indicators of God’s blessing, and certainly are not biblical measures of “success”.

“Hard to argue with fruit gentlemen”? Don’t be so smug about your numbers.

Todd you said, (which I missed at first) “ Over the years, most churches have changed everything about their services (in an effort to reach the culture) except their sermon length. My question is… where else in our culture do we ask people to sit and listen to a speaker for 45 minutes? I really can’t think of one. And I do agree with Craig: many speakers look at how much time they have to fill rather than how much content they have to deliver. That, in and of itself, does not make for a culturally relevant presentation, does it

Todd, the culture is filled with avenues in which the speaker will go an hour to ninety minutes.  If Al Gore comes to speak for $50, 000, he is going to speak for 29 minutes?

If Paul Harvey or Ziz Zagler comes to speak will they will speak only 29 minutes? 

Culturally relevant presentation!  If you want to get the ear of the unchurched and the lost, (which is not the purpose of the local church worship service) preaching the Gospel will be offensive to them, maybe they can only take 29 minutes of truth that they are sinners and in need of a Saviour.

Let us focus on presenting Christ and Him Crucified and let the Lord give the results. 

Charles