Read it all. Indeed. To this I would only add John Stott’s memorable “sermonettes produce Christianettes” (if in fact it originated with him)–KSH.
Read it all. Indeed. To this I would only add John Stott’s memorable “sermonettes produce Christianettes” (if in fact it originated with him)–KSH.
A.W, Tozer, I believe
When a sermon is good and has a point, the length is irrelevant. When it is pointless and boring it is, well, pointless and boring. I am all for the Episcopal Church stressing homiletics, but most Espisopal preachers are not especially good. And, if I hear another sermon about hiking, fishing, grandpa’s shot gun or the mentally challenged child the preacher grew up with, I reserve the right to scream. Also, as noted by Fleming, alot of preachers don’t really prepare in depth, either. Finally, sermons are like Einstein’s explanation of relativity–When you are with a beautiful woman for 1/2 hour it seems like 5 minutes. When you are sitting on a hot stove for 5 minutes, it seems like 1/2 hour.
The three sermons that I have preached each lasted around 10 minutes. There is absolutely nothing wrong with preaching a sermon of that length. It is when people go on and on, no longer saying anything that the real purpose of the Scriptural interpretation is lost. When we preach, it is to glorify God. If I can do that in 10 minutes, then I am doing well. If someone else can still manage that in 40 minutes, then they are doing well. As David wrote previously, we should focus on the quality of our homiletics, not the length.
A few months ago, whilst browsing about online, I stumbled across the newsletter of the (Roman Catholic) Dominican province that includes the Pacific Northwest. There was an article in there cheerfully anticipating that one of the beneficial effects of the Ordinariate would be an influx of vigorous, Bible-based Protestant preaching.
I fear the poor brother may be setting himself up for disappointment.
How long was Peter’s sermon in Acts 2? How efficacious was it?
As far as the saying “If I had had more time, I would have written a shorter sermon”, this pew-sitter would have to generally agree. “The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets.” If preaching is prophecy, it will be effective regardless of the duration; if it isn’t prophecy, then the preacher should at least have the courtesy to focus his thoughts.
Research has shown that the longer a speaker goes past eight to ten minutes, the less the audience retains in an almost direct inverse proportion. But, yes, what you actually say is the most important. I have heard short and long sermons that have no real point, with the only difference being that the long sermon simply said nothing over and over again.
I am convinced that for purposes of a sermon, you can say what needs to be said in eight to twelve minutes. You have use economy of language and be very concise and clear. The most in depth sermons I have ever heard were five to 10 minutes.
Since the typical sermon is not interactive, the attention span of the audience must be kept in mind. I find it interesting that my mind could be fully engaged in my professors’ lectures because my grades depended on it. In part because of quality issues, I have become unconvinced that my soul depends on the words of preachers.
When there is active interchange, time becomes less of an issue. I wonder how long Phillip spent with the Ethiopian eunuch?
Answer: Enough.
I heard a Roman Catholic priest preach a wonderful 8 minute sermon on the temptation of Christ in the desert with appropriate practical application. I heard an Anglican Evangelical priest go on for 45 minutes on “the will of God” – it was a fine academic lecture which lost its audience after 15 minutes. I tend to mistrust opinions about what constitutes good sermons.
Mine tend to run around 12 minutes usually, although a few weeks ago I preached for over 19 (I noted the time from the recording of the service). Most of my hearers are not used to that, which I was told, though a couple commented positively on the content mainly, but thought the time irrelevant. My point: When the preacher has something to say, it needs to be said in whatever time it takes. But if he has little or nothing to say, he should time his sermons accordingly. My best friend normally preaches 25-30 minutes, and his congregation is used to that. Thus conditioned, they can take it all in, just as e.g. PBS viewers can generally pay attention longer without changing channels than CNN/HN viewers. The old analogy is that when you’re enjoying a sumptuous meal, you don’t mind the time; but if it’s gruel, you can’t wait to move on.
Oh, I’d like to note that commenter #1 above was my preaching professor in Toronto! (Hey, Grant)
A sermon should take as long as it takes to expound and apply the given text. The last thing a preacher should pander to is the attention span of the modern hearer. When I preached 12 minute sermons I had a congregation of 50. Now I preach 30-40 minutes and we are 140 and growing. The only people who’ve ever complained about the length are older Episcopalians raised on 12 minute sermonetts.
I remember an Anglo-Caribbean priest from a black majority church saying that if he preached for less than 35 minutes, people in his church would complain he had short-changed them.
My homiletics prof at VTS (in the early 80’s) always told his classes, when someone asked how long a sermon should be, that “as long as you can hold my attention.”
I have sat in rapt attention for sermons of an hour or more – once for Edmond Clowney, when I was 17 and at an Orthodox Presbyterian summer camp, and later on for John Stott (at the IV Urbana Missions Conference and a few other occasions), JI Packer, as well as for some less well-known preachers.
I have also wanted to leave after 10 minutes of other preachers – usually when they merely used Scripture as a jumping off point for their own ideas, but sometimes for a godly but ill-organized preacher.
Length makes a difference, but not nearly as much as content and organization.
Matt+ (#11), while I agree with your first statement, this one confuses me:
It seems to suggest that effective communication can occur without regard to the audience. Did I misunderstand?
Hi Connecticutan,
I don’t think a sermon is a speech. The first responsibility and task is to God not the hearer…to faithfully expound what he has revealed. That could very well take more time than the hearer is accustomed to listening. So be it. The preacher in such a circumstance must trust the divine Revealer rather than pander to the human listener.
No comment on time from me.
But somewhat related . . .Hans Frei said, in essence, that one of the reasons that Karl Barth wrote six million words in Church Dogmatics was that in an age that had eroded and withered forms of Christian speech and thought, that there needed to be slow, patient, and leisurely unfolding of the riches of our tradition. We need, in all venues, in the pulpit, classroom, and elsewhere, an eagerness to have the faith unfolded for us in an unhurried way, as listeners, and the wisdom and skill, as speakers, to unfolded it in keeping with the particular task at hand.
Our loss of patience is a huge loss in so many ways, not the least of which, to speak of preaching, is the loss of delighting in someone unfolding the faith, and in the content of that faith.
I think it depends a lot on one’s philosophy and what the parish offers. IMO, our worship is centered on the Eucharist — receiving Holy Communion and praying/worshipping corporately with my brothers and sisters are the primary actions for me on Sunday morning. If I yearn to be taught and learn more intensively, I will attend Sunday School before the service or any one of the other Bible studies we have going on during the week, every week. In what is only my opinion again, the sermon should elucidate that Sunday’s Scripture readings in a brief, profound, and understandable way and help to prepare our hearts and minds to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.
I can fully understand why the non-sacramental Christian churches devote much of their Sunday worship time to the sermon. I can understand why a sacramental church without much in the way of Christian education for whatever reason would, as well. (When I was Catholic, we had no adult Sunday School and very little in the realm of adult education. The sermon was the primary teaching/education time you got.) But when the Eucharist is the focal point of the Sunday service and you have other quality teaching/learning times in place, I don’t think that long, complex sermons are necessary or, perhaps, desired in most cases.
As long as we’re swapping anecdotes… 😉 I’ve occasionally visited a nearby RC parish, where one of the priests gives very brief sermons, usually read (apparently) verbatim from prepared notes. And the tone and cadence of his voice nearly puts me to sleep. Nevertheless, I always come away with a sense that I have heard and understood the word of God.
This is a voice from the pew. My present congregation hears substantial sermons which inlude both teaching and preaching. The teaching involves the vision for and the mission of our church. If you do not have either, the sermons should be sorter.
I don’t mind longer sermons but that’s me. I just need to take notes to remind myself of what was spoken.
I once told a friend of mine that what I appreciated about his sermons was I couldn’t tell how smart he was but I would know more about Jesus and who He is.
#15 Matt Kennedy says:
I think the passage about not speaking in tongues unless there’s an interpreter handy might apply here… preaching the Word doesn’t do any good if people can’t hear and understand it. That includes not only speaking in a language the people can understand; it also includes not willfully putting obstacles in the way of their understanding. By, for instance, preaching longer than you know the congregation is capable of listening to.
Now, as several others have noted, what makes a sermon “too long” is not the clock so much as it is the preacher; and if your congregation is growing and thriving on your 40-minute sermons then you’re obviously doing something right.
But I also wanted to take some issue with “The first responsibility and task is to God not the hearer…” As a priest, you are an intermediary between God and the people — you bring God’s gifts to the people, in the form of teaching and sacraments, and you represent the people to God, in the form of offering the “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” at the altar. As one in that intermediate role your tasks and responsibilities go equally BOTH ways — to God and to the people.
I’m glad to see the volume of response on this topic! My experience is that what is a “good” sermon for some in the congregation is dreadful to others. In many ways the preacher’s task is that of the sower of seeds–what one may hear, a dozen may not, but who is to say that one was not worth the whole effort.
I have wondered if the media-saturation of our audience is not shortening the capacity of our hearers not only to accept a certain length of sermon, but also to understand it. I movie [i]Idiocracy[/i] comes to mind, though I hope many of our enlightened readers will have been spared viewing that. Might the sermon, like the printed book, be faced with a near-extinction event in the coming generation, save in very rare and protected circles? One hopes not, but the trend is agin us.
Hi Ross,
I think you misinterpreted my words. To say that the first responsibility is to God rather than the hearer is not to say that there is no responsibility to the hearer.
The fact is that sometimes a congregation needs to be stretched–especially if it has been sitting under short candy coated sermons…anything with substance preached to a congregation fed on such will be difficult to digest. It takes time, patience, and a willingness to go beyond what people say that they want when it is clear that it is necessary. I am speaking from experience. People do not always want preaching. That’s generally when they need it most.
The length of the sermon should not necessitate truncating the liturgy. If there are time constraints on the service, the sermon should be timed to permit the rest of the liturgy to be completed intact, including service music and hymns. It’s a worship service after all, not a lecture. Sermon quality can fluctuate wildly, but the beauty of liturgical and sacramental worship such as that provided for in the Book of Common Prayer is that the Eucharist never disappoints.
I don’t think Anglicanism is “eucharistically centered”. I think there is a fine balance between word and sacrament.
The thread led me to recall the well delivered sermons I have enjoyed during Morning Prayer where there is no Eucharist.
5-7 Minutes = Homily.
8-15 Minutes = Sermon.
15 Minutes+ = An incredibly inefficient use of words and time.
Just my opinion, of course.
I do distinguish between the purpose of the church school hour and the sermon in the midst of the worship service.
But I also think that a part of the job of worship is to *train* people to worship — which means many things, among them, teaching people to sit for longer than 55 minutes, and teaching them the glories and richness of *precise* [rather than seeker-sensitive] language. Hence — I advocate for the 1662 BCP language, eventually.
That being said, I would not advocate a priest starting out with a bang with a 2-hour sung mass, 1662 BCP, and 45 minute sermon, in disregard to his congregation of people who speak English as a second language, or those with high-school-graduation only, or those who were raised on praise tunes and The Living Bible and PowerPoint. It’s a fine balance, I think, between helping to shape the congregation’s ability to worship and learn and also not completely losing them along the way.
Eventually, of course, all Sunday morning worship should include Anglican choral music, chanting, incense, 45 minute extensively researched and sourced sermons with Biblical exposition and copious back-ups from church history and theology [first five centuries preferred], and the 1662 BCP [no handwaving or timbrels allowed], all in front of a participatory, rapt, and grateful congregation. ; > )
Matt Kennedy says:
…in #23:
I can’t disagree with that.
…in #25:
Balance, yes, but if I remember your previous posts you sit pretty firmly on the Reformed side of the Anglican tent; which is going to naturally affect your sense of just where that balance should be. I lean more towards the catholic side myself, and I would feel comfortable describing Anglicanism as eucharistically centered.
The purpose of a sermon at least from the Lutheran point of view is to remind us that we are all sinners and that we are all are going to Hell because we can not fill the Law but that Christ was crucified for our sins and we are covered by His righteousness. Lutheran pastors preach Law and Gospel sermons, not your best life now.
“Eventually, of course, all Sunday morning worship should include Anglican choral music, chanting, incense, 45 minute extensively researched and sourced sermons with Biblical exposition and copious back-ups from church history and theology [first five centuries preferred], and the 1662 BCP [no handwaving or timbrels allowed], all in front of a participatory, rapt, and grateful congregation”.
I love my church even though it has a contemporary worship style, but this would be ok with me, too; and was when I attended a lovely 1928 Prayer Book service–similar.
There are a number of posts here that I’d like to respond to (and this before I’ve read the article itself).
Firstly, the dearth of solid teaching and preaching within Anglicanism is precisely why we are where we are right now. The need for solid exposition has nothing to do with where one lies on the Evangelical/Catholic spectrum. We all need to be confronted with and shaped by God’s word. This isn’t likely to happen in sound- bytes.
Secondly, Teatime2 wrote:
[blockquote]If I yearn to be taught and learn more intensively, I will attend Sunday School before the service or any one of the other Bible studies we have going on during the week, every week.[/blockquote]
The ministry of the Word doesn’t exist to provide it’s members with the [i]opportunity[/i] to be taught and learn more intensively if they feel like it. It exists to make manifest the whole counsel of God to the whole body of Christ; to see that body formed into maturity and in the image of Christ. It exists to renew minds and hearts. As priests we are responsible to preach the word in season and out of season (and in the service as well as out of the service).
Thirdly, one of our distinguishing marks has always been (until recent times) the marriage of Word and Sacrament. The preaching and receiving of God’s word is, in itself, worship. It’s not extraneous to our worship, or even to the Eucharist itself. We feed on the written Word through its being preached; we feed on the sacramental Word (the body and blood of Christ) through sharing in the Eucharistic meal. We glorify God in both forms.
On a more practical note, I appreciate that bad homilies can drag on forever, even if they are only ten minutes long. Rather than arguing for shorter sermon spots, though, maybe we should be addressing the problem of bad preaching itself.
Before we send our ordinands off to seminary, perhaps we should look carefully at the seminaries they are going to– at what kind of training each seminary offers in terms of exegesis and homiletics. The two go together.
Looking to priests already in ministry, perhaps we should be making sure our priests have the opportunity for further growth in their exegetical and preaching skills. There are a number of conferences held around the States and Canada that are focused on just this need.
If I can put in a plug for a book written by my old homiletics teacher (feel free to edit it out, elves, if this isn’t appropriate), a good gift for your priest might be something like Darrell W Johnson’s, [i]The Glory of Preaching: Participating in God’s Transformation of the World[/i].
Just some thoughts…
farstrider,
There is a difference between elucidating the Word of God and teaching as an integral part of the service and conducting what amounts to a lecture during the service, no matter how compelling the topic may be.
And as any good teacher knows, lecturing to a captive audience for more than 20 or 30 minutes without feedback or the opportunity for the audience to ask for clarification or ask questions does not provide for optimal learning. Studies have shown that even adults begin to lose focus after about 20 minutes of lecture with no interaction.
To use your terminology, that is NOT providing the counsel of God to the “whole body of Christ” which, in the context of a congregation on any given Sunday, is comprised of a variety of ages, education levels, and experience in the Church. It is quite clear in the Gospels that God Incarnate Himself used different teaching styles and methods to reach the particular audiences He was addressing.
I absolutely agree that we need to be fed by both Word and Sacrament. But in terms of the Word, I think we need to be very realistic and deliberate about what can be accomplished and taught well in the context of a Sunday service. And, as our clergy do, Sunday school and adult ed. should amplify what is taught during the sermon, and vice-versa to encourage folks to participate and engage more fully by attending further study opportunities.
Thanks for your response, Teatime2.
Teaching and lecturing are not necessarily the same thing. Expository preaching teaches– but it should do so in a way that engages, informs and challenges the listener.
In an ideal church, every member would engage with God’s word on both Sunday morning and in Bible studies, adult education and so on. In most churches, though, the only teaching that the majority of the congregation receives is in the homily. That is what I mean by “the whole counsel of God to the whole body of Christ.” We praise God for those who seek to go deeper in other contexts, but we can’t leave the majority spiritually impoverished. We’ve been charged to feed them all as best as we can.
Incidentally, I have nothing against 20-30 minute sermons. Unless I’m preaching/teaching at a special event I myself tend to preach for 20-25 minutes (as do the other clergy in our church). I think a great deal can be done in 20 minutes.
During our Wednesday morning Eucharist, I will give a ten minute meditation or reflection. But that’s all you can do in 10 minutes. It may seem odd, but the difference between 10 and 20 minutes is fairly profound when it comes to genuine exposition.
I like your ideas in the last paragraph. In my previous church the Bible Study groups would study the Sunday text [i]in advance[/i] of the Sunday sermon. It gave those of us who preached a great impetus to go deep into the text (in prayer) in order to draw out those treasures a study group might otherwise miss (and so not duplicate what they had already discussed). That’s just one model, though.
I have never been to Fr. Matt Kennedy’s church, although viewed a number of videos of his sermons on the Stand Firm site. I wasn’t bored, but more to the point, I didn’t notice any howls of derision or loud snores from the congregation. Therefore, I have no reason to doubt Fr. Matt’s statement:
[blockquote] When I preached 12 minute sermons I had a congregation of 50. Now I preach 30-40 minutes and we are 140 and growing. The only people who’ve ever complained about the length are older Episcopalians raised on 12 minute sermonetts. [/blockquote]
If it is working (and it clearly is for Fr. Matt), then I say preach the 30-40 minute sermon!
But I can agree with some of the other posts also: If a pastor realises he is only boring his audience with his sermon, then he needs to think seriously about what he is doing (or alternatively, someone in his congregation needs to tell him). If he finds he can only preach a hearable 10 minute sermon, then 10 minutes it has to be. As Det. Harry Callaghan observed: “A man’s got to know his limitations”.
But perhaps with some study, mentoring or guidance (or even prayer!) the pastor might find that he can improve his technique to the point where he can preach longer sermons…?
Final point, I have to agree with the following statement by Matt+ as an [i]objective[/i] statement of what Anglicanism is:
One would hope so – it is after all the same “fine balance” that we find in the teaching of Christ and his Apostles.
“Studies have shown that even adults begin to lose focus after about 20 minutes of lecture with no interaction.”
I think those studies do not describe an innate human condition but the state of the mind habituated by the 15 min television stretches between commercials. It has not always been so. Nor does it have to be so.
I agree with you about a “lecture”. Teaching is involved in a sermon but a sermon is not mere teaching. It must move the heart and soul and body to action.