Preaching against the Clock?
I continue to reflect on my years of preaching with the aid of Hindsight Philosophy, If I knew then what I know now, safely protected from having to act on my own advice (or maybe daring God to heal me). Either way, my place above the fray is beginning to embolden me. So I move to change #4: If I were to preach again I would never preach longer than twenty-five minutes and would not worry about speaking for twenty minutes or less.
Before you rush out for lunch at Denny’s© or give me a raise because everyone really likes me, hear me out. I still have nineteen minutes left on the clock. The length of a sermon should have nothing to do with beating another church to the best restaurants, being popular with the parents of toddlers, or a morbid necessity for everyone to like me (my point of weakness). The length of a sermon should depend on one and only one thing: how long will it take for me to deliver this word from God? That’s the question – not hitting an artificial time point (25, 30, 35, 40), filling space in the program, or assuring people I am doing my job.
From where I sit today, I see only a handful of reasons that cause sermons that go long.
We have trouble explaining the message because it’s complicated and difficult to understand. And it may be – some texts and topics are complex. However, I have discovered that we struggle to explain when we do not yet understand for ourselves. When I understand, really understand, I can explain a complicated topic in just a few minutes, or explain what can be digested for one day. But when we don’t understand, our explanations can be excruciating … and long.
A second cause for long sermons is an attempt to say too much. This could be the result of not understanding the message (#1) or the mistake of trying to say everything we know at one time. As a result our sermons are bloated with two, three, or even four good sermons. A lot of hot air may make a balloon rise into the sky, but it only drags a sermon into the gutter.
Sometimes I know what I have to say, I have shaped it well, and it is just going to take 35 minutes or longer. What then? If you preach in a culture that absolutely demands going to such lengths – preach on! But if not, don’t give in to the temptation. Please trust an old preacher on this one: if you give in, your message will be lost. I’ve seen it all too often. A church that is not accustomed to sitting for that long will grow restless, especially the young mothers and fathers trying to keep their little ones from rushing the stage. If you want them to hear the message, adapt to their customs, break the sermon into two parts, or hold back ideas for later.
There are very few God-gifted preachers who can speak over twenty-five minutes and keep the audience eager to hear more (much better than an audience that feels imposed upon). These are the preachers I love to hate: they could speak about “The Nuts and Bolts of Sweden” and make it sound exiting. The rest of us, however, work with less talent and that’s okay. Let’s work with what we’ve got instead of the fourth cause of long sermons: an overinflated view of our abilities – also called pride.
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke sixteen minutes and we call it: “I Have a Dream.”
Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address in under three minutes.
The Sermon on the Mount can be read aloud in between twelve and fifteen minutes.
Almost every prophetic oracle of the Old Testament is less than a chapter in length (even if a summary).
So if I had it to do again I would take my eyes off of the clock and focus on the message and the people.
Until we meet again,
Glenn
