I just got the joke of this picture the other day, for some reason I thought it was about being a “short” pastor (which I am).
I was asked in an interview lately what music is on my ipod and I had to admit that I generally don’t listen to music anymore (apparently I have reached “that age”) and that my ipod is filled with sermons and podcasts.
And lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the traditional sermon. There are lots of schools of thought on what it means to give a “sermon.” My seminary would say that you should preach on a passage of scripture and then use topics and other verses to support it.
But there are lots of ways to preach a sermon:
- There are the sermons that use the “3 points” rule….
- There are pastors who love alliteration…
- There are preachers who talk a stern 30 minutes…
- And then there are ministers who have no concept of time….
The sermon is a big deal. Ask any parishioner why they go to their church, and they will either answer that they like the preacher, the music or the people. (wouldn’t it be great if it were all three?)
When my wife and I visit churches during the month, we always take note of how long the sermon was compared to the other worship elements; and being either the longest (or second longest) worship element of any service – it can sometimes be an ordeal. For the most part a sermon is typically 30 to 45 to 50 minutes long!
That’s the thing, I remember the things that a sermon should cover or include, but I don’t remember the part where my seminary professors said, “And make sure it’s at least thirty minutes long.”
I recently read somewhere that a professor in the Department of Teacher Education at California State University says that “…The time-worn tool of the instructor “telling” and students “listening” has become passé.”
You may not believe this, but the students of today have a shorter attention span than those of twenty-five years ago. Students, then, did not have access to the sophisticated media they have today to divert them from reading and listening. Today, these technologies are more cheaply available; and their addictive images and sounds contribute to an attention span that, for the average 17 to 23-year-old, may be between five to seven minutes, and even less for those with attention deficit disorders.
Five to seven minutes!
But just wait a second before you hit the print button and run this blog off to your senior pastor.
Let’s think a minute about Jesus’ sermons. We really only have one “big sermon” recorded. We have the infamous “sermon on the mount” and then tons of little “sound bites” that are either parable “story teaching” lessons, or times when we see Jesus teaching through his actions.
Perhaps most of his parables were twelve or so minutes; no bullets, no fill in the blanks, and no cool power point.
And then there is the media to think about. People today watch a lot of television. According to Veronis Suhler Stevenson’s Communications Industry Forecast and Report, quoted by the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2003, the average American spent 1,745 hours watching television, which works out to 145 hours a month. That’s more than six complete days in front of the TV… each month.
We get all of our information from screens.
I think a lot of times pastors miss a great opportunity in talking with their audiences by not using current topics and media in their messages. Most of this is simply because Christians as a rule try to remove themselves from secular society. One of my wife’s biggest pet-peeves is when she is talking to someone and says, “Did you see such and such on TV last night?” and the person comes back with “Oh, we don’t watch television.”
It its estimated that between 127 and 400 million people watch television every night, over 500 million use the internet world wide, millions buy DVD’s and CD’s every year, and millions more go the movies.
Let’s go back to Jesus’ lessons.
Remember, Jesus uses stories about farming and agriculture and he talks to a mainly uneducated, repressed people group. He uses word pictures about commonly found items like coins, food and farm animals. He talks about recent events and mentions their political and religious leaders (sometimes by name).
Jesus made his lessons relevant.
Were Jesus’ teachings short and to the point?
Perhaps, there is no real way to ever know, but that certainly seems to be the example we have in scripture.
So is a sermon terrible if it is forty-five minutes long and discusses the genealogies behind the book of Numbers?
No.
….well… yes, but that’s not what I am saying.
Donald Whitney says, “…many fail to think of preaching as worship. But listening to preaching is something you do, and it is an act of worship to listen with an eager mind and responsive heart.”
No matter what, God is speaking. We as a congregation need to be open to that. Jesus says in Luke 8:18, “So be sure to pay attention to what you hear. To those who are open to my teaching, more understanding will be given. But to those who are not listening, even what they think they have will be taken away from them.”
I think the topic is defiantly two-sided; pastors should strive to connect with their audiences and be easy to understand and the congregation has an obligation to at least be open to it.
Hopefully it only took you a few minutes to read this.
photo credit: Emery Co Photo
